April 9, 2008
Harvesting the Organs at Bear Stearns
Great interview with a witty, informed, and articulate hedge fund manager:
“I really make a strong effort to be even-tempered on the trade floor because the enemy of intelligent trading is emotion. If you’re crazy with fear or with greed you’re gonna make bad decisions, and emotion is a communicable disease so you have to be calm. So the mood here is very calm.”
In my experience, you can never tell if good traders are making money or losing it — they generally have good poker faces. It would be interesting to know how Todd Harrison acted when he worked alongside the manic Jim Cramer. I bet Harrison is a guy who doesn’t show much emotion.
Cat: | Time: 10:59 am (utc+8)
April 10th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
I followed Harrison very closely on a daily basis when he was at thestreet.com with Cramer. It was AWFUL. the guy has his “cool” demeanour but his trading is crap.
The worst was how he was bullish ALL THE WAY DOWN in the sickening bear market leading up to 9/11 (and after), at which point he left thestreet.com (in disgrace?)
People have short memories
April 11th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Richard: Interesting. I’ve never read thestreet.com (except in the very very early days when Cramer’s column was free) but Harrison struck me in his Wallstrip interview as having a clue (he looks like a frat boy but he talks like he has a brain) … fwiw, my first impressions of people are often dead wrong.
April 12th, 2008 at 12:32 am
todd is very good in my opinion. nice guy as well -responds to emails. id wager richards take is incorrect.
April 12th, 2008 at 11:29 am
pete: Everyone who does business on the Net answers emails, don’t they?
April 17th, 2008 at 2:35 am
Richard is correct, and Todd was buried fighting the ramp in 2003. He got wiped out-go read the archives.
He tries to frame it in the lens of the decline in the dollar. Whatever. He is no Maoxian.
Beware Todd-O
April 17th, 2008 at 3:12 am
wiped out? he seems pretty disciplined to me. if he was wrong macro- so - i dont expect anyone to be 100%
April 17th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Short: I know Maoxian, and Maoxian is no Jack Kennedy. :-) Are the archives at Minyanville or thestreet or where? Gotta link?
April 17th, 2008 at 9:05 am
“Beware Todd-O”
“Richard is correct, and Todd was buried fighting the ramp in 2003.”
Hey, while I kinda like all this “Todd” talk, let’s make sure that we distinguish between Todd at Minyanville; and Todd in FL (me). :)
April 17th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
The question is, how good could a hedge fund manager have been, if their primary business is now media? Shouldn’t they still be minting money off their own accounts, or running OPM? Or letting their family members front-run their media statements? (thnx M. Leder)
Todd-o, never met or communicated with him. Gotta admit the image he projects puts me off. Didn’t he used to be President and Head Trader at Cramer Berkowitz?
Link to his posts at TheStreet.com
April 17th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Minyanville archives for Todd-o
April 17th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Bill: Thanks for the links. He looks like a frat boy but talks smart and probably has to beat the ladies off with a stick. Now as far as his goofy stuffed animals are concerned… :-)
April 17th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
The TSCM archives, even the ones marked “Paid,” are open. I guess the time has expired. Click them and see.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Bill: Thanks, they are free (everything older than a week old should be free on the Net, obviously).
April 18th, 2008 at 7:35 am
I browsed his 2003 MV files, and it looks like he was bearish the whole year … even wrote a post about Hoofie and Bu at the end of 2003, “looking ahead” to the end of 2004, showing more bearishness.
His writing doesn’t really provide much in the way of opinion on the market, so he’s spending a lot of electrons without making any accountable calls. I’ve also seen the same stories reworked for both sites (TSCM and MV).
I’m putting out a call on my site for anybody that has year to year returns for Cramer-Berkowitz; I’d like to see how the fund did with Todd-o at the helm.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Bill: The returns are Cramer’s fund were very good (according to Cramer :-) ), though I’ve never seen a year by year breakdown of returns (very hard info to find).
April 18th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Yeah, the 24-25% aggregate annualized number gets thrown around a lot. No surprise during the “dialing for dollars” market manipulation days. I’m looking for the year by year, though …
April 18th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Bill: Cramer never gave me a number that high… I think it was low teens if I recall, but that was after fees. He did very well, especially when he sent his minions to ask embarrassing questions during shareholder meetings, etc. :-)
Email Elliot Spitzer to ask for those year to year returns. He was an investor in Cramer’s fund.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Isn’t that special? Cramer never gave me ANY numbers!
I doubt Eliot, Jim, Todd, James, or anyone still friendly or associated with Jim, want’s to disclose that data. If they DID, they already WOULD HAVE.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Bill: They don’t call it “the secretive world of hedge funds” for nothing.