Mattamana

Hey y’all,

Greetings from seedy Hoboken, NJ. I’m in the second leg of my summer, working at a hedge fund called LibertyView Capital. The firm got its name from its view of the Statue of Liberty which you could see from the several water facing window offices… I wouldn’t know, since unfortunately I sit on the trading floor with a view consisting of four Bloomberg screens against a backdrop of CNBC blaring in the background. This is the farthest thing from my VC background, but nevertheless I’m enjoying it immensely. I have to say, though, reading the blogs of folks traveling to exotic places has made me quite jealous. I’m spending my spare time planning a honeymoon to Brazil, which makes me feel slightly better.

The job involves finding investment opportunities for the fund’s long/short equity, merger arb and credit arb strategies. So far, they’ve taken positions on three of my trade ideas. One is up 8%, the other up 10% and the last down 3%. But all that could change completely tomorrow. They’ve also been very upfront with me… 80% of my evaluation is based on the performance of my trade ideas and 20% on how well I do on the fund’s softball team that plays in the Jersey City B-league circuit. In case you didn’t guess, I suck at softball… I grew up playing cricket, so I constantly have to remind myself that a) I don’t have to swing on every pitch and b) I’m not supposed to run towards the pitcher after I hit the ball. Oh well…

The first leg of my summer was at Neuberger Berman, a much sleepier asset management firm where I covered IT Hardware stocks (e.g., Apple, IBM, HP…) It was much quieter than I would have liked with very little going on outside of earnings season.

On a much happier note, Shiji and I are finally living in the same city which has been fantastic. Although I’m work ridiculously early at 7am, I’m usually done by 4:30pm, leaving plenty of time to enjoy the whole New York summer experience. It was great running into several of you through the course of the summer (most recently Marnie on the F train), and I’m looking forward to reconnecting in the fall!

Alan