164 sats \ 1 reply \ @rodpalmer 23 Aug \ on: James Lavish / @jameslavish / Bitcoin Investor AMA AMA
Thanks for doing this James. My name is Rod Palmer and I'm one of the managing editors at The Bugle.
You are one of the most respected Macro Elders in the Bitcoin space which is probably due to the fact that you played hockey which is a badass sport. In hockey you probably took a massive hit or a slapshot to the body which hurt way more than you could have prepared for or expected, do you have any experiences working in finance, as a trader, or a hedge fund manager where something similarly unexpected happened? Maybe you had a trade go against or a you took too big of a position which went to zero and cost you, which hurt way more than you were expecting?
Oh yes, I've experienced this a number of times. But one that I was totally blindsided by was with an arbitrage trade we had on in the GE/HON merger. It was by far the largest position in our book. Everyone expected all the approvals to come in, and the DOJ/FTC had approved it, shareholders had approved it, and at the last minute, before closing, the EU decided to block the merger on their own antitrust review. We lost about $40 million in just three minutes. A painful learning lesson for us.
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