Yea youâre right. Of course Iâve never risked anybody elseâs life with my endeavors, thatâs why Iâm certainly not giving this guy a free pass. He should have reduced his monthly expenses to a level that he would have been able to survive on for a few years. I donât really have that much sympathy for him. Like others have said, he tried to be a hedge fund manager, which doesnât really contribute much to this world. It seems like nowadays, the money that is being made, is all being made through ways that really donât contribute much to this world. I suppose that is a discussion for another time. I suppose I always wanted to be a Wall Street guy or big insurance salesman and stuff like that, but now I see how little that contributes to this world and in fact how much those who do it simply screw the other person to get ahead. Of course my view is somewhat tainted by the fact that I was never any good at the above mentioned things. Now I deliver pizza. It doesnât pay that great anymore and I am very much tired of it, but at least I think I make this world a little better. Even if it is just by bringing someone a pizza. My perspective on life has changed from one who wanted to simply get rich, to one who someday hopes to see the innefficiencies of those who are greedy and screw people and try to exploit them by using and working with other hard working people that want to make this world a better place. By then taking market share, I and others will in the end become rich by bringing value, not taking it. Iâm not sure if this makes sense at all, but maybe you understand I would have to double check this, but I believe you are incorrect about Cramer. I am pretty sure that he was actually the largest shareholder in his own hedge fund. I think his stake was 20 or 30%. He definitely would have been affected had it gone under. Iâm sure he probably had other savings, so Iâm not sure how much it would have cost him had it gone under.
Roosevelt's quote doesn't apply AT ALL to this jackass's situation, nor is it correct to say there's any 20/20 hindsight involved. There's a world of difference between prudent risk taking and reckless stupidity. To go from making $750K/year to not having a pot to piss in falls into the latter category. Anyone who doesn't get this is at risk to unwittingly make similarly stupid decisions.
Everyone keeps saying he foolishly risked too much. What if he was a doctor and went back to being a doctor? He was skilled in a field with a lot of demand at that point in time. So what if you lose X amount of dollars, risk is not so OBVIOUS when at that time there were companies everywhere willing to pay for skilled labor. I say it wasn't very risky when because At The Time there would have been NO problem at all in finding a job that suits your education and skills in a thriving economy. If a skilled plumber gets fired from a particular company, all else equal, he can go work for another company and still maintain his plumber lifestyle. But all else changed. The fact that the whole financial industry went bust meant that most who were (or were not) educated, skilled, honest, hard working that happend to be employed in that field lost their jobs and had to change their lifestyle. How well do you deal with change? When the market comes crashing down it trys to take as many people out along the way. Suffering is the outcome. The only obvious thing here is that no one new what was going to happen to the economy. I'd rather be the lesser person who can mentally and emotionally handle hardship than pulling my hair out cause something happend that I wasn't ready for. Shit happens to everyone no matter who you are deserving or not. How do you carry yourself when the world comes crashing down?
To risk all the cash savings AND equity to his home leave that man with no security to start again. If he found another hedgefund to work for, he still has lost all his assets. Maybe he live in that big house, but he does not own of much of it anymore because he lost it to the hedgefund, he has no cash because he lost it to the hedgefund. So he starts at 0, and not built any wealth. For someone to make $750,000 a year and go to 0 is not bravo. If he used risk management, ok, and blew up the hedgefund, then he still starts again with some assets/wealth still in his hand when he goes back to another hedgefund job. But he now has no job with hedgefund, no assets, but is living in the house because he is lucky in time when banks are a mess, and they let him stay for now. And he has friends who pay for the private school for now. And his wife is not working either. So he is a big joke to me to go to tv and pretend he feels poverty with food stamps and pizza delivery job, when he still has a priviledge of a beautiful home and private school and his wife not working.
After all this publicity, I am sure he will get a job offer Now that was a smart decision to get all this publicity for free Don't you agree?
Time for a business lesson. Making money doesn't require PRODUCING anythinig. Success in any business is achieved through creating value, if you create value for another, you can can paid, scale that value created and you go from just making a few bucks such as a paycheck, to creating real wealth. It Doesn't matter whether it's a widget, an idea, a service, or a firm that generates returns of investors. All of them can create value, and if you create value, you get paid. As for his easy, cushy job, not everyone can do it. It was a sales job, and his job was all about knowing the right people, and managing relationships. My guess is that none of the institutional buyers would want to deal with you, nor most of ET membership, it's a club, and you'r not invited. The problem here is you are looking at the situation with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Neither you, I, nor anyone else saw the economic crisis coming, it was this crisis that ruined his business, and his fallback plan. He had the wind at his back at the time, he had quite a bit of money saved, and figured that worst case scenario, he would go back to his old job. I bet most people, in his shoes, with similar situation, and exact same economic environment, would have made the same decision. The only decision I might have made differently, was accessing and using his 401k funds,. Lastly, as I said before, anyone who has ever had a job owes that job to someone who took a risk, and started a business. I respect the guy because instead of sitting around dreaming about doing something, he went out and did it, and even though thing didn't work out and he was knocked down, he's getting right back up, and in the fight again.
Yes, to use hedgefund to pizza man story for a job he is clever. He should be that clever with his money when he have a job.
There in lies many things to be assumed. Without knowing what other desperate measures were taken during the decline of his hedge fund we will never be able to say, with much merit, how carelessly he behaved. Why not this: consider before he lost even a tenth of his wealth in this hedge fund (sometime in early '08) he was ready to bail and tried to re-apply at his old job OR a similar job with around the same pay. Which may have been the "stop loss" "back-up plan" "plan B" etc. But of course there wasn't a market for him (gap down). That is just as plausible as saying he recklessly gambled his money away. Both scenarios are derived through imagination. The article doesn't provide evidence to support either one.
I am not questioning his strategy of trading, I think to put all his capital...home equity loan and savings on the bet, even with stop loss and back up plan B, is still too big the bet. Nothing is guaranteed, so to me he has delusions. He bet all the wealth he had. No one knows the future, so where is rainy day backup plan? To me his careless was betting all the eggs. He has a hedgefund, but no hedge for his life?