How I went from Horse Trainer to #1 Fund Manager in under 5 years.
Once we "make it" in life, too many of us create a smooth narrative as a "Cliff Notes" of our journey. These narratives don't serve the next generation.
Reality is a windy, bumpy road with good luck and bad luck, and plenty of mistakes along the way.
I made more mistakes than most, worked hard, and had a lot of luck, especially in the timing of when I got out of school, and when I joined a company that wanted to create a fund behind me.
Here is the unfiltered version of my long, winding road from directionless horse trainer to #1 Fund manager in under 5 years.
1. How I broke in spite of making every mistake possible
I “broke in” to investment management through insurance.
I’d consistently done everything wrong:
High school:
I didn’t take a single AP course. Instead I negotiated with the principal to reschedule the entire curriculum so I could take the minimum required courses all in a row and be gone by noon each day. I spent the rest of my time riding horses and clubbing on Sunset Strip (yes, at 16 in 21 and over clubs). I did start investing at age 16, turning $1,800 into $320K by age 20…
College:
I could have gone to Stanford or an Ivy, but rebelled against my parents and only applied to UCSD (my parents made my apply to “at least one Ivy” where my essay told them that my parents were forcing me to apply, so if they let me in I would make the next 4 years of their life a living hell. I didn’t even make the waiting list!)
Internships/post college:
I quit my stock brokerage internship 3 months in because they were paying me $8/hour vs $40/hour to teach horse riding. Then after college I worked as a litigation paralegal to pay for being in Seattle with my favorite horse trainer. I did form an investment club among all the other paralegals and secretaries at the law firm. Later I worked as a full time horse trainer.
At 25 years old, my work experience was riding horses and filing lawsuits.
Then my (late, RIP) horse trainer and life mentor, Dietrich von Hopffgarten, said to me:
“You are in your mid 20s. You will not have the same opportunities in your mid-30s."
"I want you to go to graduate school. If you face all your opportunities and still choose to be a horse trainer, then I will support you. I want you to be enrolled the next time I see you.”
He was not the type to take no for an answer.
Luckily, I had taken my GMATs already, and it was springtime, the end of the application period for graduate school, so I applied. 6 weeks later I told Dietrich I had applied.
The following fall of 1992, I went to USC MBA.
The finance department had Bloomberg terminals for students.
The economy was coming out of recession. I had been investing on and off since age 16, with bouts of huge success. For the full story, read my most popular Twitter thread How I Made and Lost a Fortune by age 24 .
I took what I was learning in classes, especially financial statement analysis, and invested.
I turned $30K in cash and a $30K loan into $120K in 6 months, then paid off the $30K. One of my classmates whom I partnered with on many projects was observing.
“You know, people would pay you to do this.”
It felt like playing Pac-Man. I couldn’t believe it was a real job. I was 26 years old and this was the first I thought of breaking into Wall Street.
So, did I get my act together then? Nope. Not by a long shot.
I was no better at attending grad school than high school or college. I got As, academic scholarships and awards. But I met a cute “second-year” guy with senioritis and we went clubbing, skiing, etc.
I showed up to take the tests.
I half-heartedly applied for internships but had already earmarked my tax refund to go to Europe for the summer with 2 cool second-years (who had jobs lined up). I didn’t network. I went to job interviews without knowing the company or industry.
How to NOT do your MBA.
So, how did I get a job?
My academic scholarship included doing research for the 2 most prominent professors in the entire MBA. They had just finished a famous paper on one of Mike Milken’s former deals just after he was released from jail in 1993. Milken called them asking for their best student.
I interviewed. Milken called my professors: “Do you have anyone else?”
I was that bad at interviewing.
I was the only one they’d recommend. So Milken hired me. I got my investing friend a job at Milken’s during school, then she got a job investing in stocks for Farmer’s Insurance.
Milken was a felon banned from the equity markets. Not an ideal place for me to start an investing career.
In April 1995, my friend heard about an opening at Farmers Insurance, recommended me, and I was in. Within a few months, I was running $1 Billion in corporate bonds. The pay was low (if you considered the hours I worked, I barely made minimum wage), so people came to get experience and left quickly.
I advanced through attrition.
During my MBA, one of my dad’s friends had said the best way for me to break in (since I had a non-Ivy, horse trainer background), was to go where there’s alot of turnover because they pay poorly.
Then I could advance faster and get to manage money earlier.
A 3 year track record against the stock market is the same no matter where you work. Then you can take that and get a job anywhere, even if you didn’t go Ivy.
Doing this got me where I wanted to go: tech.
I started as a paper mill analyst in bonds (that’s the job I applied for)
I partnered on a research piece with the equity analyst covering paper mills.
She told me the energy analyst was looking for a job, so I should start covering energy for the bond department
Then the equity energy analyst left and I said I could do his job as I was already covering energy in bonds. They said yes.
Then I picked up tech for bonds. Then I picked up Asia equity when the Asia analyst left, because it gave me more information about tech.
Then the tech equity analyst left, and I asked for and won that slot.
By January 1996, 18 months after graduating USC MBA, I was running a $1B bond fund, a $300M equity tech fund and a $350M equity energy fund.
When we hired a “real” energy analyst to run the energy portfolio, the first thing he asked was:
“What is the most junior person here doing managing the most money.”
Fair question. No one had noticed me collecting jobs. Soon after, they hired someone for my bond job.
I enjoyed the next several years at Farmers Insurance building my track record running a tech fund.
As a tech and Asia analyst, I headed to Asia twice a year.
Spring of 1998, I came into the office on a Sunday to get my stuff together as I was flying to Taipei later that day. I see space measurement people all over our floor. I asked what they were measuring for.
“We’re measuring to turn these cubicles into offices.”
I knew it was over.
Insurance companies, at least Farmers, worship the life insurance division (most profitable).
Investments departments get paid too much, have too much volatility, and are frowned upon because they are always asking for things (more travel budget, Bloomberg terminals, etc.). Only the department heads and high-end managers got offices.
The only way they would replace our cubicles with offices is if they were replacing us.
The moment I got back from Europe, I started applying for jobs. This time, I interviewed well because I could talk about what I had done, my investments, and my track record.
Note: Learn to speak prospectively, about what you could do, with confidence and you won’t have to wait like I did until you have experience.
One early interview didn’t go well.
A tech analyst, Sam Kim, at a famous high-growth tech fund called Amarindo Investment Advisors wanted to hire me as his junior analyst. This fund was one of the top performing in the world, and their flagship fund was run by the owner, Alberto Vilar.
It was a huge step up for me. They flew me first class to New York. I stayed at the Waldorf Astoria. Very different than puddle jumping on Southwest Airlines for Farmers Insurance.
All went well until my final interview with Alberto Vilar , the mercurial owner of the firm.
He started the lunch by berating our waitress for bringing him water with ice in it. He kept going until she cried.
Then he turned to me and said:
“You can’t possibly be a successful high growth tech investor. Managing high growth is like putting an IV of heroin into your jugular (he looked like he had tried this). You need a PhD or masters in engineering and you need to be smarter and faster than you.”
Next.
Nicholas Applegate needed a tech analyst for their midcap fund.
We shared similar professional contacts. So I networked, used back channels, and nailed the interviews.
I was in!
2. How I co-ran the #1 Fund
By June 1998, I had a 2.5 year (Jan 1996-June1998) track record managing a tech fund internally at Farmers Insurance. Before that, a mix of bonds, energy stocks and working for billionaire Mike Milken’s family office.
A nice educational blend of experiences, but not the makings of a #1 fund.
June 1998, I started as the tech analyst on the midcap fund, a $4 Billion fund.
I settled in, getting to know the portfolio manager and the types of stocks he liked (momentum). I had come from a value-oriented insurance investment department, so I felt a combination of culture shock and whiplash with how they made investment decisions.
The most overwhelming change?
Our daily numbers were seen by the world every day.
We (analysts and portfolio managers) sat in a big bullpen at desks with 6 inch dividers. I had the traders above me on my left, my boss diagonally across, and the guy who thought he should have gotten my job directly across from me. He screamed and berated me daily.
Some days, I’d need a lot of decompressing from his bullying, but I stayed the course.
My numbers were strong, and in the markets, numbers are everything.
July 1998, the CIO (my boss’ boss) announced they were launching a diversified (over 100 stocks) global technology fund. Each tech analyst from across the firm would contribute their best ideas. We had meetings of the 8 of us around a round table once a week.
August 1998, the CIO called us in. We were top 10% in the world.
“What’s wrong with the fund?” she asked.
I said I thought top 10% was good.
She said:
“I hired you because you’re the smartest tech analyst in the world. This fund should be #1.”
Me: “You can’t be #1 with group-think.”
Her: “Fine, you and Aaron run it. I want #1. No turnover restrictions. #1.”
Door-to-door, my move from horse trainer to fund manager took less than 5 years.
Now I had to get it done.
Our CIO couldn’t have been clearer: #1.
Aaron and I had complementary skills and personalities. I was on the road, reading the tea leaves and talking to management. Aaron was in the office, watching how stocks were trading, listening to market rumors, and taking advantage of price dislocations.
Our first challenge was already brewing in late August.
Asia stocks had been pulling back, and the dollar was strong, but most pros were saying this was just an “Asia” thing. I kept hearing #1 and no turnover limits in my head.
The thing that could kill us was a down month, or even a down week.
We had internet, semiconductor and other high-growth, high-volatility names in the portfolio. We also had a significant amount of Asia-based stocks since it was a global fund.
These growth stocks had done well.
We weren't going to miss much if we stepped aside for a few weeks. And the downside risks were real. Asian nations and companies had loans in USD and revenues in local currencies, so as the dollar strengthened, their revenues and ability to pay loans both suffered.
Few others were worried yet.
I told Aaron we should sell all volatile stocks (most of the portfolio), and move into more stable consulting and services companies. Consulting and services have long term contracts, so are more stable than betting if a computer gets purchased during the holidays.
The trade worked both ways.
Other funds also bought into consulting and services for their stability, so those stocks went up (I was hoping for flat). And the semis and Asia tech companies we exited? Those declined 30-40% in 6 weeks, after which we bought in again.
That was August and September, 1998.
If it feels exhausting to you, we are only 2 months in. I was traveling 90% of the time, working 80-100 hour weeks, and always on edge as to what I could be doing better.
Aaron was key in our next big break.
theglobe.com was coming public that had failed to do so before, due to lack of demand. It had no real revenues, an unclear business model, and unproven “management” aka college kids running the company. This was 1998, not 1999 when this kind of stock was the norm.
The internet was heating up, so bankers tried again.
No portfolio manager in our firm wanted any shares. Our fund was allowed up to 2% of our portfolio in an IPO, but never could get all the shares we wanted. We were the smallest fund (so only got our percentage allocation). In this case, because no one else wanted shares, we got the full 2%.
"Serious" investors thought this stock would flop.
Aaron told me the deal was heating up. We should go all in. He knew about the previous failure, but he could read markets.
We got our full allocation, 2%. Then a crazy thing happened.
Many smart investors thought the stock would fail. A bunch of hedge funds shorted every share they could. They needed to borrow stock to do this, driving up demand for shares. But regular funds like ours were buying, further driving up demand for shares.
Against all odds, theglobe.com started going up.
Then hedge funds started buying shares to undo their shorts.
The stock, theglobe.com, went up 10X that first trading day.
Intra-day theglobe.com went from being 2% to 20% of our portfolio.
Never before and never again have I seen something like that. We had to sell it because we were a diversified fund, not allowed to hold 20% of the portfolio in one stock, and because that stock had returned decades’ worth of return in hours.
Then we were compounding off a 20% day in the third month of us two running the fund.
That’s running a fund with the wind at your back
That was month 3. October 1998.
In 1999, there was the “Year 2000” (aka “Y2K”) glitch where code only had 2 digits for the year, so 00 could be 1900 or 2000.
Companies delayed purchasing large software systems until after the clock moved into 2000.
My insistence to our Chief Investment Officer that Y2K was a demand problem meant I led the Year 2000 project at Nicholas | Applegate evaluating all our companies for their Year 2000 readiness. Every company told me they were pausing large technology migrations, so I knew SAP was in trouble and avoided it.
SAP was down 60% from July 1998 to April 1999, vs NASDAQ up 17% in that time period.
Avoiding the Asia Financial Crisis and Y2K issues were as important as our big wins, because our gains added to our performance instead of making up for losses.
Each month was fraught with avoiding landmines, finding the best stocks and reading market tea leaves. We were the #1 fund for the 4th quarter of 1998, but we were still a tiny fund, so no one paid much attention.
Except for one man.
Alberto Vilar.
He noticed.
Remember Alberto Vilar, the founder of Amarindo Investment Advisors, who interviewed me and said I would fail because I couldn’t understand growth tech stocks as I wasn’t a PhD or engineer? The man who said investing in tech is like putting a heroin IV into your jugular?
At the end of each quarter, the Wall Street Journal does an article about the #1 fund and the runners up.
For the #1 fund, they draw a dot-matrix picture of the manager’s headshot. Aaron and I were featured each and every quarter.
#2 gets a mention but no headshot.
We were #1 each quarter in 1999 (I left November 1999). And Alberto Vilar was #2.
I called Sam Kim who had tried to hire me at Amarindo and asked if Alberto remembered and noticed.
“Yeah, he remembers. He’s pissed.”
Of course, I shouldn’t have cared, but I’m human, and it was nice to hear.
1999 was like 1998, except with hotter.
Each day, week, month, and quarter I continually asked myself:
What sector had run too much?
What sector had emerging strength?
Which did I think would be the best tech sectors globally going forward?
I rotated 85% of our assets into the sector I thought would be the best performing and 15% into the sector I thought would be the second best performing.
Each quarter, we were right on the #1 and #2 sectors. For 4 quarters in a row.
Surreal.
Within each sector, I focused on owning similar stocks, ie stocks that moved together. This is the opposite of diversification. But my goal was #1, so I needed a 100+ stock portfolio to act like a portfolio of 6-12 stocks.
I picked stocks that moved together, like birds of a feather...
Aaron was brilliant at buying on dips, and he was a real live “stock whisperer” with names like Qualcomm. He studied that stock’s action for so long he knew when to buy more and when to trim. This boosted our performance.
1999 was the year of the IPO.
I met Martha Stewart, Ross Perot, and many others bringing their companies public. The year started, like 2021, with high multiples on earnings, and when those got absurd, moved to high multiples on revenues, then rethought whether revenues were needed at all. By the summer of 1999, it felt like companies were IPOing on slide decks.
Tech was on fire! For 1999, the index I had to beat, the Hambrecht & Quist Technology Index, was up 150%!
Strong performance was easy in an up market. Being #1 was not.
If (nearly) everything is going up, you have to be certain you are in the subsectors that are going up the most. Otherwise, you’ll be left behind. And owning a stock that goes down when the average is up 150% will kill your chances of running a #1 fund.
Yet, I didn’t feel stressed like you might think.
I didn’t feel a crushing pressure to perform. Instead, I was driven towards a goal. I was focused on input, not output. Every day I pushed myself to have the best names in our portfolio.
Barrons asked if I was going to cocktail parties to brag. Would I lose focus?
When the interview went to print, the entire office was chanting my quote, which was set out in bold in the article, as I walked in that Monday morning:
“I don’t go to cocktail parties. I go to bed early.”
Such was my focus in 1999.
The up 20% October 1998 compounded by more strong months. Our first 12 months return of 640%.
And in 1999, where we were #1 every quarter and for the year, our 1999 return was 495%.
I’m flying high, running the #1 fund.
Why would I ever leave?
A few things happened in the summer of 1999.
I had a friend who kept whispering in my ear: “You know, Emmy, the internet may be hot, but the rest of the economy is turning down, heading for a recession.” He was super smart, managing the wealthiest families’ assets at Morgan Stanley. I paid attention.
With my index up 150% and average revenues/earnings not up that much, stocks had gotten more expensive. But valuations alone don’t cause downturns.
Stock markets have a sector leading the way. Internet was 1999’s lead horse. It was running fast.
I questioned what would slow the internet.
Internet stocks benefit from network effects. In the case of eBay, the more people that joined, the more buyers, sellers, and choices everyone had, thus the value of eBay went up by multiples of any single person joining. This network effect had a formula:
Value of Network = n(1-n), which simiplies to the value of the network equals the number of people on the network squared.
The early mover advantage wasn’t double. It was squared!
What could stop this incredible powerhouse of growth?
A slowing of the rate of growth of people joining the internet. That is what I watched like a hawk. It was still going strong through 1999, but started to slow later in 1999. That was the beginning of the end of the Dot Com boom.
This slowing plus my friend’s warning of recession made me think it was time to be somewhere I could short stocks, ie a hedge fund.
The second thing that happened in the summer of 1999 was I got uncomfortable with my new fame. Early interviews with Barrons, CNBC, WSJ were fine. Then people start calling me a “tech guru”. This makes me nervous.
When I hear “guru”, I start thinking I need to go learn more rather than be at the top.
Then my annual review came up.
I was making $135K base. I wanted to move that to a round $150K base. They said no. $145K. They said they’d overpaid for me to join and it was time for others’ salaries to catch up.
I had just made the company (which seeded the tech fund) $24 million.
Meanwhile, Loomis Sayles hired away 60% of our Asia team in late June 1999 , so the CIO asked me to cover tech for Asia. I was investing and analyzing Asia tech stocks at night and working as the midcap tech analyst and running the tech fund during the day all summer long. I’d finally collected too many jobs!
I was getting 3 hours of sleep.
I came to work and my boss broadcast across the bullpen:
“You look tired. Don’t think you’re getting paid anything extra for all that work!”
He was joking, but on 3 hours of sleep, I wasn’t amused.
I went to a tech conference in September. Over dinner, my friend asked how it was going. “Mixed” I said. Mixed is market-speak for bad.
She said: “We are looking for a semiconductor analyst.”
I met her boss, the smartest of the “smart-money” hedge fund managers, Glenn Doshay of Palantir Capital. Here was someone I could learn from. No more guru talk at age 33.
Once I left, Art Nicholas, the founder of Nicholas Applegate called Glenn.
“You stole my best analyst. I’m not going to rent your plane anymore!” - Art
“I wouldn’t be able to steal your analyst if you paid her.” - Glenn
Glenn had laughed out loud when I told him my salary.
Art kept renting Glenn’s plane.
When I speak of this time, many people say that I was just lucky. My reply? Thanks!
I’d rather be lucky than smart. All. Day. Long.
But could I do it again? Would I?
3. Reflections - Could I do it again? Could you?
Reflecting on what happened, I ask:
Could I do it again?
Maybe. I can still see big opportunities, like the double bottom in March 2020.
But I don’t tend to take as big bets when I see them. And I don’t have that level of focus. In 1999, I had the perfect blend of enough experience to excel but not too much to be gun shy of risk. And I had a singular work focus: my goal was to work at a top hedge fund.
The March 2020 to July 2021 was a repeat of tech markets of 1999, but I was distracted with other interests, advising companies, working at startups, and generally pulled in too many directions.
Let’s say I (or you) could run the #1 fund again…
How?
What approaches and character traits can help you as an investor?
My Approach
A. Know where you are
When mapping out where you are going, the first step is knowing where you are.
If this seems easy or obvious, look around. Are we still in a bear market? Or is the recent rally the start of a bull? Has inflation started declining? Or was the last reading a temporary reprieve? What about layoffs’ impact on consumer demand or the housing cycle?
Where are we now is never obvious when we are there. It’s only obvious looking back.
Do your best.
Make your best bet. And keep reading incoming data and challenging your thesis. And be confident enough in your process to not change your mind too often.
B. Place your bets on the future
Let’s say you decide “where we are” is still in a bear market. Now you need to decide for how long, and what the bottom, capitulation and exit from the bear might look like. You don’t need to bet on those, but have a thesis for what it might look like.
Then you observe new data and challenge your thesis, changing it or making it stronger.
You are challenging both the “where we are” as well as the “where we are going”. For a #1 fund, you have to continually be right, so you must keep questioning yourself.
Keep in mind some portfolio managers are better at bears than bulls and vice versa. I doubt I could run a #1 fund in a bear market. So keeping in mind where we are includes knowing if your personality is a fit for investing in this type of market.
The final step is to translate your idea of what the future holds into a #1 portfolio.
C. Build your portfolio to reflect your bet
Once you know where you are and know what your bet for the next move is, you build your portfolio.
I think of a portfolio as sector bets and stock bets.
If you look at the top fund each year, it is usually a smaller fund with fewer holdings. Small funds can buy and sell without moving market prices. Some years in the 90s, the top fund had 6 or 12 holdings. That fund may have gotten lucky, smart or both.
When my boss told me she wanted me to be #1, I immediately saw an issue: because our fund was in the “diversified” category, ie we had to hold at least 100 different stocks, this would dilute any positive impact a single stock or bet had.
How could I compete with the winning funds who had 6 or 12 holdings?
Correlation.
If I selected groups of stocks that moved together, a portfolio of 100 stocks could act like a portfolio of 15 stocks, maybe even 6. I was also helped by the market. Stocks tend to correlate more in strong up or strong down markets.
I focused on picking the best sectors, like Japan internet and communication semiconductors, and then within those sectors, finding similar stocks, such that I met diversification requirements while delivering the performance of a portfolio with far fewer stocks.
Since I was running an institutional fund, wouldn’t clients object? Not when I deliver 640% returns in a year, or up 90% in the first quarter of 1999. One client said he'd fire us if our performance dipped below the triple digits (less than 100%).
All the top funds were only in the hottest sectors. And all those stocks were correlated. I don’t know if my competitors did this on purpose, but I did.
Once I chose my sector, then stock selection was a matter of bottom up research, speaking to management, making sure there weren’t any black holes in their books, following new tech coming out and new trends in networking, computers and phones, knowing who would be gaining share based on what trends I saw winning, and picking those stocks before everyone else discovered them.
It’s hard, interesting and exhausting. It’s best described as drinking from a fire hose.
Those are the tactical steps. But the biggest thing to being a #1 fund manager is having the right personality for it.
I’d been investing and earning huge returns since I was 16, especially in bull markets, and suffering losses in bear markets (I finally made money in a bear with my successful $2 billion bear market short of semiconductors in 2000.)
I instinctively knew I had what it takes to make money.
The following year, in 2000, my friend Trisha Schuster whom I met in the MBA, who told me people would pay for me to do this fun job, she ran the #1 fund in the world.
We share a lot of personality traits. What are those traits?
Finally, what character traits are needed to run a #1 Fund?
1. Curiosity & First Principles Thinking
Think of investing like making a bet on an iceberg while only getting to see the tip with binoculars. Once, I had a CEO call me and ask if I knew what was going on in his company. All the frauds I uncovered via curiosity and first principles thinking.
Enron - Why didn’t their cash flows reconcile when I put them in a spreadsheet? And why did it benefit them to have 5 annual reports for one year? (Auditors went to jail)
Worldcom - Why did the CEO and CFO have enough free time to call me every evening 5 days in a row? Weren’t they busy running a large company? (apparently not)
Peregrine - Why couldn’t I find any customers for the new division of high growth software they broke out on their financial statements? (the sales were made up, management went to jail)
SAP - Why would any customer risk installing big software systems in 1999 when they could wait 6 months after the Y2K transition had passed? (they delayed, hurting SAP)
2. Endurance, Self-Reliance & Single-mindedness
I have a lot of energy. I keep this going by moving every day. Even when I work 100+ hours, I get on a treadmill and read research. Never stop moving. That physical energy turns into brain energy.
You can work longer, harder and smarter when fit.
Running the #1 fund is like being the most popular girl in high school.
You have a lot of friends, and even more enemies. Lot’s of new and old friends will offer advice, stock picks, and fun outings.
Stay on your own path.
Remind yourself what your system is. Check whether it’s working or needs updating. Take in ideas from others, but know where you came from and why you were hired.
Don't lose yourself.
3. Flexibility & Confidence
Part of not losing yourself is striking a balance between humble confidence and flexibility.
If you change your mind and strategy with each incoming idea, your fund will be average at best (likely below average due to trading costs). But sticking with a losing strategy because you are married to a strategy is a great way to kill your fund and career.
Keep watching the incoming data. Learn how to challenge yourself. Study the concept of cognitive dissonance (keeping opposite views in your mind vs having tunnel vision).
Those are the 3 categories of personality traits I see in top fund managers:
Curiosity & First Principles Thinking
Endurance and Self-Reliance
Confident Flexibility
Bonus qualities that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but they served me well in investing, but perhaps not in life…
Hypervigilance & Oversensitivity
When someone starts to get a bit angry, tense, uncomfortable, I can feel it. Immediately I sense danger and want to run away. This hasn’t worked well in dating or marriage. But it made me an exceptional investor.
Most investors meet company managements at various conferences.
With high growth investing, things change fast. So, I was on the road visiting companies and going to conferences 46 weeks per year. I lived on airplanes.
I met the same people week after week.
I could tell when their mood changed. Their energy was lower. They had tension in their body or voice. Having seen them nearly every week for several years, I knew what that tension meant.
This isn’t someone giving me a wink or a nod. This us being human and paying attention.
Everyone gets tired. But we are more tired and tense when we see layoffs coming, sales not happening, and disappointment ahead. My oversensitivity and hypervigilance gave me an emotional shortcut to read people.
Here’s to your journey as an investor.
Be sure to leverage your strengths, know yourself and keep learning!