re: Reading "Liar's Poker" now....

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He told people that his profit share was modeled after Phoenician merchants, who kept a fifth of the profits from successful voyages, distributing the rest to their investors

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“Hedge?” Robertson retorted angrily. “Hey-edge? Why, that just means that if I’m right I’m going to make less money.

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They quickly found the boss could not abide charts, which he had been known to describe as "hocus-pocus, mumbo jumbo bullshite".

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“Why would I want to do that? Why? Why? That’s just dirt under my fingernails.” That was
the end of that attempt at risk management

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The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent,” Keynes famously declared. Being early and right is the same as being wrong, as investors have repeatedly discovered

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At one new-economy gathering, a banker was overheard saying, “No traditional Graham and Dodd investor invested in AOL. They shorted it. And got fricked. They’re learning the new model.”

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Almost a year earlier, Merrill had rebuffed an offer from Bank of America that was worth $90 a share. Now, with the investment-bank model in tatters, Merrill was willing to do a deal for $29 a share without hesitation. One of Wall Street’s oldest names was collapsing into the arms of a Main Street commercial bank. As one newspaper wrote, it was as if Wal-Mart were buying Tiffany’s

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