A Message To The Buyside Management Pretenders

I have just received word that some of my former colleagues were let go from their seats.  Performance was fine but the asset class was out of favor so flows have gone the wrong way.  Such a short term solution, their style would have come back in favor.  The squid coupon clipping management team decided to let them go.  I love the management of large investment firms.  Did you know that a fairly large percentage of them have never managed an ounce of risk in their lives?  But yet they are able to make decisions about the effectiveness of investors.  Its so easy to cast stones at others especially if you have never done this job.  To those who judge us but have never walked in our shoes I offer up this Theodore Roosevelt quote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who  at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”