I love it when someone from within a conservative environment is able to say this. It shows that indeed investing is apart from the mathematics, or maybe as much as included, a creative sport. These are true lessons when the whole outside world talks about recessions and black mondays.

“It’s, like, one business school guy, one finance major after another, kids who, from the time they were twelve years old, were watching Jim Cramer and dreaming of working in a hedge fund. And I think in reality that, probably, if anything, they’re less likely to make good investors than people with sort of more interesting backgrounds… Because I think that in the end the way that you make a ton of money is calling paradigm shifts, and people who are real finance types, maybe they can work really well within the paradigm of a particular kind of market or a particular set of rules of the game—and you can make money doing that—but the people who make huge money, the George Soroses and Julian Robertsons of the world, they’re the people who can step back and see when the paradigm is going to shift, and I think that comes from having a broader experience, a little bit of a different approach to how you think about things.”

From: “Interview with a Hedge Fund manager” N+1 magazine via Kottke.org

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