Are you a down on your luck hedge fund manager who hasn’t had a good and/or original idea in a while? Did you get your face ripped off the last two years by going the wrong way on everything? Do you sense that your investors are only sticking around to be nice and/or because you won’t let them leave but will desert you the second you give them an option better than illiquid shares of a walkie-talkie passion project, unless you come up with something and fast? Then you might want to consider sticking their money in this: Continue reading »
just a suggestion
Something you may have picked up on is that lately? Customers are not so happy with their banks, particularly if their banks are Bank of America or Citigroup. The websites apparently never work, there are the rage-inducing fees, and there’s the general feeling that Brian Moynihan and Vikram Pandit? Don’t actually care about them. When was the last time Brian or Vik called, huh? When was the last time they did something nice, for no reason other than wanting to? When was the last time they thought to say “You look really pretty tonight”? Can’t remember, stopped counting and not since the checking account was opened. And while it would be one thing if every other bank treated its customers like they were expendable, some don’t. Take Société Générale Group-owned-Komerční Banka. Not only do they act like they really care but give people a reason to be loud, proud customers. Continue reading »
As you may have heard, Wall Street is set to lay off thousands upon thousands of financial services employees over the next several months. This is truly saddening and our condolences go out to those who will be without work for whoever knows how long. Having said that, one thing we constantly hear complaints about is the insult to injury process that is an HR-administered lay off. You’re brought into a conference room, you’re told how valuable you are but at this time don’t fit into the bottom line blah blah blah, someone passes out tissues and you’re asked if you’d like your belongings boxed up and shipped to your home or if you’d like to clear out your desk yourself but either way you need to be gone within the hour, possibly escorted to the door by security. The whole thing is demeaning and downright insulting. Which is why, we’ve always wondered, if your firm is laying off scores of people regardless and you might be one of the unlucky ones anyway, shouldn’t they come up with a better way of letting you go? One that appeals to your competitive instincts and your zest for a good bet? One in which you could make some money and have some fun? Something, perhaps, like this? Continue reading »
How To Convince A Hedge Fund Manager Not To Track Dirt All Over The Floor Of Your Open House
By Bess LevinPrudential Douglas Elliman broker Darren Sukenik has rules for people who come to his open houses: have the cash to buy what he’s selling, don’t waste his time, and do not bring god knows whatever is on your shoes into this apartment. In order to ensure prospective buyers abide by commandment number three, Sukenik typically insists people either take off their shoes before entering or cover them with “surgical booties.” Explaining his rationale, he told the Times, “[These] apartments are precious…you want to make it feel like a jewel box. You wouldn’t wear construction boots in a jewel box.”
Usually, people play by Sukenik’s rules. There is one group of people, however, who’ve brought some friction to the table.
Mr. Sukenik said that in the past, some buyers, especially hedge fund executives who view it “humbling” to bare their feet, have angrily stormed out.
Is your boss the type to JUST BLATHER ON as though anyone gives a shit re: what he has to say because what? His name/initials are on the door? As you can’t very well just get up and leave or whip out the wrap it up box, you’re probably looking for new and inventive ways to describe his painful monologues/speeches to your colleagues and friends. To that end, might we suggest “ball-achingly indulgent”? Continue reading »
Are you old as fuck? I mean, for Wall Street, what with all the whippsnappers running wild, not for, like, the earth? Might we suggest an age-old technique for getting that spring back in your step that apparently fell out of fashion almost 100 years ago but is surely set to make a comeback, probably with even better results due to advances in medicine and technology? Continue reading »
Before Shoving A [Female Hormone Pill] Down Your Junior Trader’s Mouth, Consider Butching Up Your Bitches
By Bess Levin
If women ran Wall Street, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and LTCM would all be in business today, according to this article, which today raises the debate that’s been raised just a few (million) times since the crisis started. Females are more risk averse, the presence of testosterone breeds more testosterone (whereas environments with less T ’cause your levels to decrease, as in the case of stay-at-home daddies), women are “more likely to admit that they’re wrong, faster,” men are more likely to engage in pissing matches with each other (which was the subject of Audur Capital founder Halla Tómasdóttir’s doctoral thesis entitled “The Great Big Penis Competition: The Story of Mergers and Acquisitions in Iceland”), blah blah blah. For those of you who want to take this “women make better money managers in the long run” theory (which holds that the ladies might not make you as much money in the short term but probably won’t blow up your firm like some people) for a spin but already have a team in place, a word of advice.
According to Doug Hirschhorn, a “peak performance coach to Wall Street traders” consulted for the story, Andrew Tong is the exception, not the rule. Don’t waste your time trying to find the perfect pair of panties for your male colleagues to report to work wearing. Instead, focus on spiking the girls’ morning coffee with T and teaching them to spit. That’s where you’re gonna see results.
While he was working on his Ph.D. in sports psychology, Hirschhorn got an offer to join what was then one of the largest proprietary trading firms in the country—with 1,200 traders, many of them former sports players—and help them improve their trading. “What was most interesting to me, was that out of the twenty women who were there, five of them were tremendously successful, so the ratio of success for the women was 25 percent, whereas it was maybe 2 percent for the men,” he says. He found that it was easier to teach women when to be more aggressive than it was to lessen the overaggression of the males.
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