The Story So Far: King Ahasueres dismisses the insubordinate Queen Vashti from her post as the head of his Investment Committee, and bans her for life from the securities industry.
After a while, the king’s investment fortunes began to change for the worse. Amid general market weakness, his portfolio sagged, and underperformed even the anemic general market benchmarks. He and his army of financial advisors and portfolio managers had seemingly lost their touch. One day, while preparing to ring the opening bell at the Shushan Stock Exchange, in commemoration of one event or the other, the king’s thoughts turned to his deposed queen. He remembered Vashti and the positive influence she had on his portfolio, and missed her well thought-out asset allocation decisions, and her ability to gain a quick, thorough understanding of even the most exotic securities. Unfortunately, there would be no bringing her back now. Vashti was damaged goods, and even if he could get her reinstated by the authorities, her return would bring unwanted additional scrutiny to any firm even loosely associated with his portfolio. It was also clear to the king that there was no one within his shop who was prepared to take over that position. He would have no choice but to look outside to find someone.
The king set up a meeting with his outside counsel, at their offices. The king sat at the head of a massive table in a conference room on the 32nd floor of an office building in downtown Shushan, as several partners (billing an average of $825/hour) tossed recommendations his way. Finally, an associate (billing a relatively modest $450/hour) came up with a really good idea. “Your majesty should gather together portfolio managers from all over the land, and sequester them in a small, WiFi-equipped office building on the royal campus. These money managers should be given everything they need to do their jobs. Each portfolio manager will receive a laptop preloaded with the trading software of his/her choice, a subscription to whichever daily/weekly/monthly financial publication he/she desires, a Bloomberg terminal (with two screens!), and a personal “Excel jockey” to do his/her spreadsheet work. Each manager will be given a $10 million model portfolio, and will invest/trade that portfolio over a period of six months. After six months, each portfolio will be reviewed, to see how the portfolio managers fared. In addition, each portfolio manager will spend the entirety of a single trading day with the king, so that he/she can be witnessed in a “live” setting. After that, the portfolio manager will be given 60 minutes to describe his/her investment style to the king, and to discuss how he/she would invest the king’s portfolio.”
This idea pleased the king greatly, and he decided to proceed accordingly.
Feeling quite full of himself, the young associate added, “Of course, I’d also recommend that Your Majesty sign a nondisclosure/non-compete agreement with each portfolio manager. The last thing we need is for Your Highness to run into any intellectual property issues down the road.”
At this point, the king frowned deeply, whereupon the uppity associate was promptly removed from the conference room (and the firm’s fast track) and sentenced to 10 years of proofreading regulatory filings.
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