I've never heard of Andrew Lahde. I wish I had paid closer attention.
He could have made me a lot of money from this fiasco.
Andrew Lahde, the hedge-fund manager who quit after posting an 870 percent gain last year, said farewell to clients in a letter that thanks stupid traders for making him rich and ends with a plea to legalize marijuana.
Lahde, head of Santa Monica, California-based Lahde Capital Management LLC, told investors last month he was returning their cash because the risk of using credit derivatives -- his means of betting on the falling value of bonds and loans, including subprime mortgages -- was too risky given the weakness of the banks he was trading with.
"I was in this game for money," Lahde, 37, wrote in a two-page letter today in which he said he had come to hate the hedge-fund business. "The low-hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government."
It's amazing that like a sewage treatment plant, politicians and the Smartest Guys In The Room are nothing more than floaters.
I've never heard of Andrew Lahde. I wish I had paid closer attention. He could have made me a lot of money from this fiasco.
12 comments:
Funny, but I can kinda see where he was coming from. In 15 years, the guys from Rice and the UT MBA guys, while having a really nice education, had ZERO street smarts. In the brokerage and trading industry, guys with street smarts and could think on their feet tend to run rings around those Ivy Leaguers.
I had a habit of hiring people who went to community college and worked odd jobs, waiters, or people that spent time behind the trigger in the Marine Corps. It was a motley collection of former flight attendants, art history majors, and even one combat vet that only had a GED and his associates from a community college. We tended to kick some serious tuckus when compared to other offices. People with high end educations tend to overanalyze things and that means they take time. Time kills you.
Mind you, in the planning offices and some high level stuff, you want the blue blood quant jocks but never ever on the front lines.
My friend who works on Wall Street (for the moment...) says the general trend has been to hire MS/PhD guys (in engineering, science, math) over MBAs. In my experience MBAs are excellent at creating an image of success but are often not so good on actually accomplishing things. But they're the guys making the big bucks so I used to envy them.
A few years ago I seriously considered going for an MBA. I was acing the practice GMATs, had my references lined up, and had a narrow list of schools to apply to. Right before taking the GMAT I found out my wife was pregnant, so an MBA was effectively out of the question for me. I was pissed at the timing but that was probably one of the luckiest things to ever happen to me. I'd be graduating into a tanking economy with 6 figures of debt.
Hi Lou!
OT, but since you're from Texas, I'm curious what your thoughts are on the 7-11 election poll.
When did 61% of those elitist 7-11 coffee sipping Texans start supporting Obama? WTF?
The 7-11 poll is heavily skewed because 7-11's are in Austin which is heavily Democratic and very liberal but not the Houston area. Literally not a single 7-11 around. So, you're actually only getting a partial sampling of the Texas electorate.
So Dewey defeats Truman again.
I'm curious what your thoughts are on the 7-11 election poll.
Why?
Writing letters like that are what gets you hauled in front of Congressional inquiries.
I notice he denigrates those seeking "eight" figures or more, so I assume he walked with seven figures.
Were I ever so fortunate to accumulate that much money, I wouldn't be bragging about it to the world!
Instead come up with some plausible excuse for exiting the workforce before age 40.
Vague references to a serious illness works well for deflecting curiousity - that way no one asks too many questions about why you've dropped off the map.
Spending most of your youth in formal education is very conservative. Not politically, but culturally. Its the safe, grinding, put in your time kind of thing.
By the way, which fits this meme better, Obama, or McCain?
I suspect that those who want the "Fairness Doctrine" reapplied will be unpleasantly surprised to find that it will also be applied to speech on the Internet.
Political speech should never, ever be regulated, under any circumstances.
@Scott,
The 7-11 poll is heavily skewed because 7-11's are in Austin which is heavily Democratic and very liberal but not the Houston area.
I was wondering if that might be the case.
@Lou,
Why?
Because you live in Texas.
Akubi, I missed on one point. Houston itself is realtively liberal however everywhere outside of Houston in the Houston Area (which is really most of the populace) is very conservative. Still, 7-11 agreed 15+ years ago to allow Diamond Shamrock to take over the area and they'd pull out of the Houston market forever.
Crap, when I moved to Austin I literally got a Slurpee every day coming home from work out of nostalgia.
@Scott,
I’ve never been outside of the airport in Houston and that was scary enough humidity-wise. Other than the Houston airport, I am utterly clueless about Texas – other than a few friends who went to graduate school there and quickly left when they were done.
Slurpees.
Wow, I haven’t had one since I was a little kid.
BTW, I like this relatively new Alaskan Exposure blog.
Post a Comment