QUESTION:
Dear Martin:
I hope you are well and congratulations for your amazing and educational daily blog.
1. Why you never accepted the business proposals of “The Club”?.
2. Why you said that be a hedge fund manager, would alter your quality of life?.
3. It is so stressful be a successful hedge fund manager, like George Soros or John Paulson?.
I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
JEMV.
ANSWER: We are all motivated by different things. Trading has been like an ATM for me and I learned long ago that you can make hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, but that is beyond living standards. It is play money at that point. Some people want to be billionaires because it makes them think they are successful by a money standard. My success I measured by a contest against the market forces. Far more challenging.
Rigging markets, manipulating them, or bribing politicians to ensure you make money to me was cheating for what end? Just to be some billionaire to say you are? That made no sense to me and advising many of the richest people in the world showed me that it was not a lifestyle I would ever aspire to for the money then owns you. Plus, those in “The Club” are the most unethical and dishonest people you would ever want to meet. They also own the press who will never write about the truth behind the curtain.
Besides having to count your fingers after shaking hands with those in “The Club” is not the type of business I cared to do. I was famous for throwing out any client that ever tried any nonsense. One Japanese company signed a contract and then the first month tried to cheat on fees. I closed the account and returned all fees even though it was $500 million. My contracts always allowed me to shut down an account if the client tried to nickel and dime me. They were shocked. I was never desperate for business so it was amicable or forget it. My view I took care of clients and it was more of a quasi-partnership.
Even in my court case, the government supported the bank HSBC to put a gag order on me to prevent me from helping the Japanese against the bankers. The law clearly stated that I was obligated to help a victim. But as always, the bankers are ABOVE the law.
If I joined “The Club” and started to buy silver for example during the Silver Buffet Rally, how do I know I would not be their exit? Silver was rising but gold declining. It was an obvious manipulation to all professionals.
As far as being a hedge fund manager who is really in the global league, I did not hire people to manage for me. I actually did the management because some of the best calls are the most difficult to do. Most people will second-guess the computer and won’t do the trade. It takes real experience to pull the trigger.
Your greatest opponent is ALWAYS your own emotions. So if you cannot achieve the confidence to know what the markets are doing even in the most chaotic moment, then you should not be a hedge fund manager.
In the New Yorker article on me, they said I walked into the trading room after covering all my short positions during the Long-Term Capital Management Crisis when “The Club” lost a fortune even with their bribes, and I announced I covered my shorts and said I was going to the beach. Some people took that as arrogant like what do you do after winning the Superbowl. I went long and placed my stops and knew the computer was right and the best thing for me to do was to walk out. It is called discipline. I was one of the few who saw the crash coming selling the high and bought the low. You have to know when to step aside and just do it. Yes that trade won me Hedge Fund Manager of the Year. It takes confidence, conviction, and guts.
It is not that I ever felt stressed. If that was the case then you cannot trade. You have to look through the curtain and see the reality on the other side. If you cannot do that with comprehending reality, you cannot be a hedge fund manager. Many are want-to-be traders for the money. But they do not have what it really takes.
I was on call 24 hours a day. Had teams around the world watching for me. No matter what the time, they called in whatever country I instructed them to watch. The decision was always mine.
There is no getting tired, drunk, or lax. There is NEVER a day off. You must be on point all the time. You have to have incredible endurance. Forget the social life.
To this day, it is hard for me to sleep more than 3 hours without waking up. So from that perspective, it did change my lifestyle. Just always had to be on point no matter what the time and had to know what was going on everywhere all the time. Not stressful, but addicting. I do not know if I could ever just stop. So I may be addicted to work, not drugs, booze, smoking, or even coffee. I have gone a week of so without coffee.
So the lifestyle would be more confining. Less freedom to travel and see everything in the world before they blow it all up. These days I am more interested in preventing the authoritarian world from taking over everything. As an American, I am the property of the government who cannot even have a bank account outside the USA. This is a personal battle now for freedom that I am fighting for my entire family and what do we leave behind. So there is nothing for me as far as making money. The battle now is to preserve even the right to spend what you have.
