Wall Street – A portfolio manager at a prominent hedge fund has a history of physically torturing analysts when they get stock picks wrong.
Over the past few months several – if not dozens – of junior and even senior equity research analysts have spoken to us about their abusive portfolio manager. The first call to us came in the late evening of September 3rd, 2019. Dozens other followed.
The call started with a junior research analyst named Anna. Anna started at the hedge fund as an intern. Everything was smooth sailing. When she was done with her internship, she was offered a job as a junior research analyst. Things turned south three months into her position.
“I ended up researching three stocks,” Anna said to us with tears in her eyes. “Two of those stocks went up one hundred plus percent. That was a wonderful feeling. I made the firm money – and lots of it. However, one of those stocks went down 20%. That was when I first felt the wrath.”
Anna told us when she was wrong on her stock pick the portfolio manager went off a limb. Chairs were thrown. A hole was punched in the wall. The portfolio manager even took scissors and cut a huge chunk of her hair.
“I really shook me up when he cut my hair. The other analysts at the firm just stared and tried to stay out of the way. After work I drowned my sorrow in a six pack and a pack of smokes.”
Another analyst named Greg approached Anna the next day and told her he has had enough of the portfolio manager. According to Greg, the portfolio manager has a violent history and treats his analysts like garbage. That is when they formed a pack and decided to reach out for help.
We spoke to Greg over coffee on a cloudy New York morning. Shocked is an understatement from the account we heard.
“The portfolio manager at my firm is a psychopath” – Greg bluntly stated. “I’ve never seen someone put a cigarette on someone’s arm until I worked at that God forsaken place. I never thought I would watch someone get slapped across the face in corporate America. I didn’t think I would have to lie about my blackeye to my girlfriend.”
Greg says the only reason why he continues to work at the firm is because the pay is extraordinary. He can make over ten times the amount an average American makes in one year. But despite the pay, the abuse has become too much.
For over a month more analysts than we can count told us their accounts of working for the violent portfolio manager. One man told us he got his wrist broken for accidently saying distribution payment was a dividend payment. Another analyst said he got a book thrown at his head for using an 8% discount rate when he should have been using a 12% discount rate. Finally, another lady told us that the portfolio manager called her boyfriend and told her she had been sleeping around (she hadn’t) when her short on natural gas went south.
We were shocked to hear so many accounts of the foulness depicted in these Wall Street horror stories. It amazed us how long those analysts worked at that firm despite the abusive portfolio manager. All of them said the pay was extraordinarily spectacular. I guess when you bring home a million dollar bonus an individual can take an untold amount of abuse.
Despite the accounts everyone of those abused analysts told us, none of them have gone to authorities. None gave good reasons why they haven’t gone to authorities. We can only speculate, but we believe the abused analysts are frightened. Scared that the abusive portfolio manager will take his abusive to higher levels. We think he could murder. I guess we shall see…
