Wall Street Financier: Notes from High Altitude©
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
When you hear “old people” talk it sounds like this: When I was in my 30s I had so much_______fill in the blanks: ambition, fearlessness, stamina, strength. But then even guys in their 30s “feel old” when comparing themselves with how they were in their 20s. WTF ? “If I… …
We know that grit makes all the difference in the world for success (kudos to Angela Duckworth for that) but if you’re in a disruptive avant garde industry like activist hedge funds, you better check your pugnaciousness. I was called the Pitbull of Wall Street like I’m walking around with a …
It’s the time for another one of my readers to shine: “Max, I am a [redacted] industry analyst for one of the largest investment firms. Sometime ago while doing a visit at a large company we cover, I was the leading analyst conducting our due diligence visit. As I started …
Do you know your fallacies [list of informal fallacies] ? People are often lead by irrational mind tricks and trips employed by high charging individuals. Heuristics, faking social proofs, high flying stories backed by other stories, mocking people, and so forth are tactics used to win and gain support. Bernard Madoff …
A publisher (let’s call them ramdomly) asked me to write a CEO Bluebook on the blueprint for CEO ascension. The problem with that is CEO ascension is not something like writing a cooking recipe formula. Also, CEO biographies are all over the place, from Steve Jobs to Travis Kalanick, you …
I’m speaking out today 10 Max Cantor “maxims”. I know I’ve slipped a few of those gold nuggets in previous posts, will not be repeating those. I’m sure you can find them if you try. To simplify here, we’ll start off at number one. The World is full of ass*oles …
If you were born in medieval times, you’d be fighter. But you’re not. There were only two classes in medieval England and elsewhere: peasants (shepherds and farmers) and warriors. And warriors were the backbone. Warriors were the defenders of the villages against invasions from barbarians and warring factions. So if… …
There’s a Harvard Business Review writeup “To be Number One, get the Right Number Two” (Rosabeth Moss Kanter, 2012). The message is that “most leaders benefit from a running-the-company mate. A good number two can back them up, reinforce their message, and handle major responsibilities with the same broad view as …
Headlining and spearheading (not sorry for my investment banking jargon, folks) the June 1st ’17 Fortune magazine portrait is an excerpt from Adam Lashinsky new book, Wild Ride: Inside Uber’s Quest for World Domination. The article title is Riding Shotgun and is about Travis Kalanick (TK), Uber’s CEO. Adam Lashinsky is …
I didn’t know what Krav Maga was until recently. Monday, June 5th 2017, The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece on it “‘Contact Combat’ before work” with the story of PayPal CEO Dan Shurman (age 59) being a daily practitioner of it. I thought Jujitsu was intelligent and robust, but Krav Maga …
