Last Straw

Price­less. Andrew Clark, for the Guard­ian:

The boss of a suc­cess­ful US hedge fund has quit the industry with an extraordin­ary farewell let­ter dis­miss­ing his rivals as over-privileged “idi­ots” and thank­ing “stu­pid” traders for mak­ing him rich.

Yes­ter­day the 37-year-old told his cli­ents that he had hated the busi­ness and had only been in it for the money. And after declar­ing he would no longer man­age money for other people, because he had enough of his own, Lahde said that instead he inten­ded to repair his stress-damaged health; he made it clear he would not miss the fin­an­cial world.

“The low-hanging fruit, ie idi­ots whose par­ents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Har­vard MBA, was there for the tak­ing,” he wrote. “These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the edu­ca­tion they received (or sup­posedly received) rose to the top of com­pan­ies such as AIG, Bear Ste­arns and Leh­man Broth­ers and all levels of our gov­ern­ment,” he said.

“All of this beha­viour sup­port­ing the aris­to­cracy only ended up mak­ing it easier for me to find people stu­pid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.”

Lahde became one of the biggest names in the invest­ment industry when one of his funds pro­duced a return of 866% last year, largely by fore­cast­ing the US home loans industry would collapse.

In his farewell let­ter, which con­cluded with an appeal for the leg­al­isa­tion of marijuana, Lahde said he was happy with his rewards and did not envy those who had made even more money.

“I will let oth­ers try to amass nine, 10 or 11 fig­ure net worths. Mean­while, their lives suck,” he wrote, cit­ing a life of back-to-back busi­ness appoint­ments relieved only by a two-week annual hol­i­day in which fin­an­ci­ers are still “glued to their Blackberries”.