“An irregular pattern of total wealth as well as financial distress levels — such as maxed out credit cards, bankruptcy and missing bill payments — emerged among the various degrees of intelligence”

One way to explain this would be that the causes of these financial setbacks are more or less random (ie intelligence is not a protection against them). For example, if your spouse is diagnosed with a terminal disease with very high treatment costs, the fact that you are a genius will not save you any money on the medical bills.

Most of the things that can really kill your financial situation (theft, car accidents, illness, criminal charges, divorce, mental illness, drug addiction, natural disasters, etc.) are usually unrelated to intelligence. There is a tendancy to think that very smart people with very high incomes are immune to the kinds of struggles that plague “normal people”, but in reality most people face the same basic problems regardless of income level or intelligence.

I wasn’t saying that the average IQ person has a better chance at wealth creation (where the study doesn’t necessarily indicate that they have a better shot). I was merely saying that there are reasons why the average IQ person has a better shot at business success.