Habits of Billionaires

[BSD]

Read the other day, after Hilary died, that his mate (Sherpa) Tenzing, tried SEVEN times to get that hillock we call Everest, before eventually making it with Edmund ~ most people would give up half way up the first attempt.

Absolutely !

So, think we need to start a hedge fund now eh !

QUOTE]

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We are evaluating exactly this at the moment. But seemingly, we missed the better times

Well, that's excellent, certainly wish you all the best there if you decide to go ahead and implement.

Personally, I'm somewhat of two minds on that, I see the undeniably very clearcut advantages of running OPM, of the potential to an enormous upside with a pretty limited downside...

But, on the other hand, you have the potentially pretty debilitating hassle of having to deal with clients yaggling about drawdowns or clamoring for when a new high water mark will finally be reached, etc...

Still haven't come to a final conclusion in my ponderings. I firmly believe that you can achieve pretty much any financial objectives you may have either way, with or without OPM, going with OPM just carries less personal risk, albeit at the cost of a higher hassle factor.

Anyway, best of luck if you decide to go ahead

 

[DaxDestroyer]

Absolutely !

So, think we need to start a hedge fund now eh !

QUOTE]


Well, that's excellent, certainly wish you all the best there if you decide to go ahead and implement.

Personally, I'm somewhat of two minds on that, I see the undeniably very clearcut advantages of running OPM, of the potential to an enormous upside with a pretty limited downside...

But, on the other hand, you have the potentially pretty debilitating hassle of having to deal with clients yaggling about drawdowns or clamoring for when a new high water mark will finally be reached, etc...

Still haven't come to a final conclusion in my ponderings. I firmly believe that you can achieve pretty much any financial objectives you may have either way, with or without OPM, going with OPM just carries less personal risk, albeit at the cost of a higher hassle factor.

Anyway, best of luck if you decide to go ahead

You are spot on. I had to deal a lot with very demanding clients, therefore I'm really hesitating to do it again

 

[BSD]

I had to deal a lot with very demanding clients,

I can very much sympathize with that

This here is downright lovely again:

"When 3rd Place on the Rich List Just Isn’t Enough

NEW YORK TIMES

...Mr. Adelson may well be the richest American that most people have never heard of. One explanation for his relative anonymity is that he is a newcomer to the highest altitudes of the fabulously wealthy.

...his stated goal of surpassing Bill Gates and Warren E. Buffett, the only two titans ahead of him on Forbes’ most recent list of the country’s richest people.

...The Las Vegas Sands went public in December 2004, and over the next two years his net worth soared by $17.5 billion. That works out to almost $1 million an hour, weekends, holidays and nights included. “He got richer faster than anyone else in history,” said Peter W. Bernstein, co-author of “All the Money in the World,” a book about the people on the Forbes 400 list.

Mr. Adelson started a business selling toiletry kits to motels, tried his hand at the mortgage broker business, and in the 1960s he joined Mr. Chafetz and another friend from the old neighborhood, Ted Cutler, in a charter tours start-up.

But it was not until he founded Comdex, the premier computer trade show through much of the 1980s and 1990s, that he hit on an idea that propelled him into the upper reaches of the wealthy.

To this day, Mr. Cutler is not sure if his longtime friend even knows how to use a computer (“we always had people working for us who understood them”)."...

Continued...

If one wants a chuckle there is nothing better than having a look at the jobs section in newspapers.

Job descriptions demanding "experience", "knowledge of particular industries / products" or other highly arcane, irrelevant skill sets aren't just funny, but they are also highly counterproductive and way off the mark, encouraging a disastrous "we've-always-done-things-this-way" kind of groupthink where debate / innovation is not encouraged.

Human resource practises are, imo, one of the major reasons why big companies don't survive very long, just go and have a look at who the dinosaurs were a mere 50 or so years ago, vs how many of them are still around today.

You don't need to be an engineer to run a very successful company making great cars, nor do you need to be a rocket scientist to run NASA extremely well.

What you do need to achieve outperformance with an established firm or a start-up is common sense, an ability to isolate the key factors driving success, and, of course, an ability to manage through setting stretch goals, and then motivating people to achieve them in whatever creative, innovative way they see fit, which means you don't have to waste loads of time on managing people and processes, you can lean back, focus on the big picture, and just manage by objectives.

If you are good, you can be good in any industry.