Muffie on Markets

Muffie Benson-Perella (muffie AT muffmarkets.com) was an Associate in the Investment Banking Division of a “Bulge Bracket” bank. She holds a B.A. in French and Art from Vassar College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She concentrated in Contemporary French Poetry at prep school where she was awarded the exclusive premiership of the school’s “French Club.” Today, Ms. Benson-Perella is the Founder and Managing Director of “Muffie on Markets” (http://www.muffmarkets.com), a deep dive into capital markets, finance and investment strategy. She is also the Founder and Managing Director of Muff Cap, LLC., an invitation only, private investment vehicle for prestigious and accredited investors only, employing an actively managed, long-short strategy.

There are a lot of sketchy characters in finance. Some people who ran hedge funds don’t have any sort of finance background at all, if you can believe that. Or any business education.

I’ve been trying to figure out strategies to invest for MuffCap, LLC and I thought that I would talk to some experts who had already been successful investors. Bess played a terrible joke on me. She pointed me to this guy she said had run a really successful hedge fund and that I could learn a lot from him. So I started chatting with him online. It is pretty obvious Bess was joking. I think you can pretty much tell from the chat log.

10:27:41 AM muffiehbs05: Hi.
10:27:43 AM CilantroFP: yo shit
10:27:50 AM muffiehbs05: Yo shit?
10:27:51 AM CilantroFP: hey sorry
10:27:54 AM CilantroFP: wrong im lo0l
10:28:07 AM CilantroFP: who’s this
10:28:21 AM muffiehbs05: I’m Muffie, who do you think I am, sheesh
10:28:31 AM CilantroFP: haha no idea
10:29:09 AM muffiehbs05: Well, I read your book and I’ve started a hedge fund (See the details at http://www.muffmarkets.com) and I thought I would say hello and try and, you know, see what I might learn.
10:29:38 AM CilantroFP: cool, hey there!
10:29:46 AM muffiehbs05: Hey there!
10:30:26 AM muffiehbs05: Or, I dunno, maybe there isn’t much to learn?
10:30:43 AM CilantroFP: oh your that muffie!
10:30:51 AM muffiehbs05: “That Muffie” ?
10:30:57 AM muffiehbs05: How many are there? My name is pretty unique.
10:31:09 AM CilantroFP: muffie from dealbreaker who bess keeps pointing me to whenever i bug her about reviewing my book

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Muffie Benson-Perella (muffie AT muffmarkets.com) was an Associate in the Investment Banking Division of a “Bulge Bracket” bank. She holds a B.A. in French and Art from Vassar College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She concentrated in Contemporary French Poetry at prep school where she was awarded the exclusive premiership of the school’s “French Club.” Today, Ms. Benson-Perella is the Founder and Managing Director of “Muffie on Markets” (http://www.muffmarkets.com), a deep dive into capital markets, finance and investment strategy. She is also the Founder and Managing Director of Muff Cap, LLC., an invitation only, private investment vehicle for prestigious and accredited investors only, employing an actively managed, long-short strategy.

After I started my hedge fund, Daddsie ordered me a bunch of books on investing and finance. I moved into the UES condo that Daddsie used to lend to Nina, some girl that was always hanging around him until a month ago or so, and I got like seven packages with a dozen books all on investing.

Some of the books are really dull, and I don’t really have the heart to tell Daddsie that I already read a bunch of those kinds of dull books at Harvard, where I went to HBS.This one, “The Intelligent Investor,” had all sorts of wonderful cover blurbs. On the back “Money Magazine,” which obviously knows something about finance given the title, glows: “Fully conveys the basic principles of [Graham’s enormously successful and popular approach to investing.” Warren Buffet is right on the cover with: “By far the best book on investing ever written.”Sounds good right? Wrong.

Sure, it looks like a normal paperback, though it is kind of thick (650 pages worth of thick), but you start going through it and find out that the pages are exactly like a big finance text book. Booor-ing. Ugh. I figured there must be a bit of a shorter explanation somewhere on Mr. Graham, so I looked him up on Wikipedia and what do you think I found?

The guy died in 1976!

I don’t know what Daddsie was thinking. Hedge funds are a modern invention.

I did really like this book “Way of the Turtle,” though. It’s about this guy who makes a bet that anyone can be a successful trader, and so he starts a little camp of sorts and teaches everyone how to make outstanding returns. Now that kind of thing is fun. So I got to thinking, I should use MuffCap, LLC to open a little school. So I decided to invite a few girls to my own little hedge fund camp, “Way of the Muff.”And the first girl to accept was: Bess Levin, genius finance girl from DealBreaker!

Bess is an official contributor to Muffie on Markets too. You can reach her here at bess AT muffmarkets.com!

Welcome aboard, Bess!

Muffie Benson-Perella (muffie AT muffmarkets.com) was an Associate in the Investment Banking Division of a “Bulge Bracket” bank. She holds a B.A. in French and Art from Vassar College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She concentrated in Contemporary French Poetry at prep school where she was awarded the exclusive premiership of the school’s “French Club.” Today, Ms. Benson-Perella is the Founder and Managing Director of “Muffie on Markets” (http://www.muffmarkets.com), a deep dive into capital markets, finance and investment strategy. She is also the Founder and Managing Director of Muff Cap, LLC., an invitation only, private investment vehicle for prestigious and accredited investors only, employing an actively managed, long-short strategy.

So as I am sure you know, I used to work at a Highly Prestigious Investment Bank. I won’t name it, but you know the one I mean. It was a pretty tough environment, and being from Harvard just doesn’t do as much for you as you thought it would when you first called Daddy in the Cayman Islands to tell him you got accepted. Back then you thought that crimson colored ink on the parchment meant everything. It still means mostly everything, but life can really make you jaded, and reality can be disillusioning.

Part of the thing, I think, is that there are a lot of Harvard people at the prestigious investment banks. You sort of got the impression at school that you would stand out, but you sort of don’t at the best banks, since they are full of other Harvard people. It is hard to shine.

Competition was really thick at the Prestigious Investment Bank I joined, and unless you want to work ten hour days, or worse (I know what you are thinking, but some Associates were working fifteen hours a day for most of the week and going to the office Saturdays and many Sundays) you had to find other ways to stand out. Fortunately, not everyone’s father is one of The Bank’s best customers. I started off with a lot of clout and I got lots of perks, especially during orientation. Really, all that review on the numbers and stuff, who needs it? It was easier just not to go. And that, dear friends, was something I could shine at. How? I found a sponsor.

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Muffie Benson-Perella (muffie AT muffmarkets.com) was an Associate in the Investment Banking Division of a “Bulge Bracket” bank. She holds a B.A. in French and Art from Vassar College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She concentrated in Contemporary French Poetry at prep school where she was awarded the exclusive premiership of the school’s “French Club.” Today, Ms. Benson-Perella is the Founder and Managing Director of “Muffie on Markets” (http://www.muffmarkets.com), a deep dive into capital markets, finance and investment strategy. She is also the Founder and Managing Director of Muff Cap, LLC., an invitation only, private investment vehicle for prestigious and accredited investors only, employing an actively managed, long-short strategy.

(Muffie’s first foray into weblogging, an appropriate introduction to her years of investment banking ups and downs, is hereby reproduced):

My father was beside himself when he heard I had applied to business school.

Being fairly good at predicting the sorts of things that would cause an outburst from my father by that time, I had wisely gone through the process without a peep to either of my parents, even as they pestered me about what I was going to do with my life. This was unusual, as neither of them really aspired to anything like a career of substance for me.

I suppose if I had asked, my father would have grudgingly written a fat check to start an art gallery or a boutique for me and cajoled his, admittedly substantial, social circle to buy things they did not want or need in order to give me “a start.” In this case, “a start” was code for “find a husband to support you so we don’t have to.”

This too was unusual, the aversion to supporting me, because my parents had quite carefully picked for me the most useless of educational paths that almost guaranteed they would be forced to support me until I was married. I had been boxed into attending Vassar by clever sabotage on my mother’s part. She had failed to sign the application checks that had gone to Stanford, Brown and Berkeley and then quietly intercepted and disposed of the many letters of protest and warning that followed. I often wonder about the act of making the checks out but not signing them. Why bother? I never saw the applications after I handed the envelope to my mother. I never would have known if they had gone out empty. Or not gone out at all.

I had desperately wanted to go to California, imagining that the sunshine and tanned bodies would somehow restore something I had lost long ago but could not identify. It was not to be. I found out about the unpaid application fees only after I had accepted my offer at Vassar, my last choice. I suppose it is telling that I just shrugged off the incident. My parents had always interfered. Why should this surprise me?

Since they were paying for it, and the mere utterance of the words “financial aid” filled me with a lingering horror, I obediently majored in French and, after embarking on Vassar’s study abroad program in Siena, Italy (my parents made it clear I was not welcome at home over the summer and a job was out of the question), I added a second major in Art. Consequently, as graduation approached I was uniquely unqualified to be anything like a productive member of society.

I kept my mouth shut during the long one-sided family dinner conversations that contemplated my fate. I would be lying if I said it was easy, but that’s only because I like to talk. A lot of the discussion revolved around me taking a position at one or another of the many foundations my father donated vast sums to. This comforted my mother, who had met my father through a chairty event for just such a foundation and was now effectively a well kept woman.

I neglected to tell them I had already sent out applications to three business schools. Cindy and Betsy had convinced me to apply with them. It was hard to argue with their logic and though I hated math, Cindy pointed out that this was applied math, not math math. And Harvard didn’t really emphasize the math part at all in any event. The whole thing would be like 2 more years of college. One look at the brochure after that and Harvard was definitely my first choice!

I failed to catch one of the letters from HBS that ended up at home. I could have sworn I put my school address down for the mailing address but Cindy was talking to me the whole time I was doing the application so I don’t remember.

I was home the weekend it happened and I heard my father in the study yelling after my mother had brought him the letter and he only stopped when she coyly reminded him that husbands-to-be are plentiful– in the right MBA programs. I had broken up with Phillip a month earlier since I found out that he had been sleeping with Erika the entire time we dated, and my father had only just gotten over that. He and Phillip’s dad knew each other from work. Phillip was in law school. After my mother reminded him of that, my father was on the phone to the Harvard Board of Trustees daily for a week. I guess he has a friend on that board. I was accepted in the first round! I’m not even sure if I remembered to send in my last essay! Cindy and Betsy went to Stanford though.