I quite agree with the virtous circle that you have drawn.
I had to study financial theories, options and such stuff as well when I was going through a traineeship at a bank. It was quite a pain but now I find it useful when diving into tokenomics and DeFi stuff in the crypto world :-)
Yes, some stuff is quite useful, but some stuff is outdated and over-simplistic (e.g. the CAPM).
Mostly I really enjoy the challenge of this exam.