This is a brutally honest reflection from an industry veteran sharing hard-earned wisdom about fund management, Finance Twitter culture, and what separates successful investors from the 99% who underperform. The author, Gregory Blotnick, emphasizes that mastery isn’t about ideas or technical analysis, but about execution, which comes from self-mastery, patience, discipline, and humility. He discusses the lonely reality of fund management, how to identify authentic voices on Twitter, the importance of knowing yourself as an investor, and why he believes Twitter is largely a waste of time that should be replaced with reading books and focusing on your own development.
1. Introduction: Why I’m Writing This (Gregory Blotnick)
To be clear, I’m not a talented investor/analyst/PM, and in HF world I’m a nobody…I’ve been in the industry since 2009, I’ve had the honor to work for and work with a lot of unbelievably talented PM’s, I’ve made an enormous amt of mistakes, and that’s really all I can offer.
Having a good attitude, being humble, loyal, relentlessly optimistic and having passion for the game is the only reason I ever got anywhere…God knows how many doors were opened for me that I didn’t deserve. I say this as not to be held in any higher esteem than is merited.
Ultimately, my #1 rule of FinTwit is below…and so a lot of the discourse on here, I don’t participate…I haven’t earned the right to.
2. What I Believe: Patience, Discipline & Humility In Fund Management
Only three things matter: PATIENCE, DISCIPLINE and HUMILITY.
It takes 5-7 years to become a decent analyst/trader, and 10-15 years to develop domain/industry expertise plus process discipline and a functional but dynamic risk mgmt philosophy.
After that, you now simply have a seat at the table with the other tens of thousands of brilliant people in this industry…99% of whom will underperform the S&P 500.
So for all the discussion of ideas on here, like, mastery of fundamentals/technical/idea gen is background noise…what matters is EXECUTION, which is a function of self-mastery. I’ve written many times “in between great ideas and great outcomes lies a gaping chasm, and that chasm is called execution.”
The formula isn’t % gain…it’s (position size * position % gain) = position contribution to P&L…you don’t see this discussed on here. Great performance is rarely from these squirrely-ass flimsy names that move 50%…it’s found in slow-moving, low-beta megacaps that you can make a 15-25% position and then ride for quarters if not years. But a manager’s ability to do that? Entirely a function of PATIENCE + DISCIPLINE…not the idea.
Have to work backwards…before you can be a great PM, or a great ANYTHING, you have to be a great man first…that means inculcating the correct character traits, and in my opinion, that requires reading a lot of non-finance, non-business material.
3. Recognizing Who Is Who on FinTwit
To me at this point the only guys I can really respect are the ones who launched a fund and are on here with their real name, showing their perf/investor comms in real time, good or bad, with full accountability. Highest honor. In the arena. Even if AUM is low or the track isn’t where it needs to be… shit can change VERY quick in this game, in both directions…flatten the book, take a week off, rebuild, one hot quarter, two hot quarters, full-year perf accelerates and you’re very much alive. Never shit on someone just because they’re not “somebody” yet.
These are the people I find myself interacting with just because if you have been in this seat, you know…this is a very lonely game…you spend a lot of time in your own head, at war with yourself, and no one around you really understands except someone who has been there. Only a complete and total idiot would willingly sign up for a game with a 99% chance of failure, probably higher…you have to be absolutely crazy, delusional, a high-energy psychopath who is relentlessly bullish on themselves to even take that leap… unfortunately I have those traits and so I can see it in others immediately…attitude is everything and you have to lift each other up.
Roosevelt’s “Man In the Arena” is the most accurate way to view twtr…it’s 99% critics on here and 1% guys trying to build…get in where you fit in.
4. The Unglamorous Truth of Hedge Fund Management
A lot of this game is just survival… Everything is about hanging around the hoop long enough to get lucky. Guys take themselves out of the game far more than anything else, which I can certainly speak to…at best, it’s a monotonous, dreary grind…long periods of nothing…chop, stemming P&L bleed, waiting for a favorable backdrop or mkt regime that aligns with “what you do”… and most importantly, NOT DRAWING DOWN.
The mental impact, moreso than the financial impact, is what fucks you in a drawdown…the opportunity finally arrives/regime changes, you should be aggressively pushing chips in, but you’ve lost the killer instinct…that’s what dooms you, or at least, it’s what has doomed me on several occasions…lack of PATIENCE and DISCIPLINE when your process isn’t working. This creates self-defeating negative feedback loops, tempts you into style drift or just doing outright stupid shit out of desperation…hardest part of the game by far, and again, like sizing or self-mastery, you don’t really see these things discussed on here.
5. Anonymous Long/Short PM’s and Analysts
There are a few anon L/S PM’s lurking on here and the #1 tell is a combination of HUMILITY and PARANOIA. You can spot it instantly…because the truth is, the job sucks, which is why the pay is so good. You are putting out small fires all day, every day…99% of your focus is on losers, P&L detractors….you don’t even notice the winners and over time, winners feel more like a signal that your positions are crowded and you’re about to blow up in a factor-fuckjob. There’s no rest, ever.
I recognize the anon pod L/S guys too, mostly through relentless cynicism…comes with months if not years if grinding dumb ass credit card data and wondering what the fuck you’re doing with your life. The work never ends, always playing catch-up, always trying to get real P&L attached to your name and not fake-ass alpha trackers.
Beyond that, there’s a crazy amt of twtr LARP…keep it simple…trust the guys who are on here with their real name. If you’re anon but “run a fund,” just go live, my brother…your scoreboard, your track, that’s all live anyway… I say this to lift you up, not bring you down. Don’t worry about the critics. Fuck them, they don’t matter. The people who matter, you instantly earn their respect, and the benefits of being authentic on here far outweigh the drawbacks.
6. The Crux of It All: Knowledge of Self
The market is a mirror. Alternatively, the popular maxim goes “If you don’t know who you are, the market is a very expensive place to find out.” This to me is what matters in fund mgmt. more than anything else. I reflect back on the risk management systems of some of the best PM’s I’ve ever met, and in a way, they were Frankenstein-ish creations that offset the manager’s flaws and defects of character, refined through years of severe self-reproach. This is EXACTLY why they worked.
What this game teaches you is that there is “no one size fits all” – you must find an approach that fits YOUR SPECIFIC TEMPERAMENT. No one on here has answers for you. You do that work all by yourself, in silence.
To borrow a turn of phrase from Montaigne…there is only one way to hit the bullseye, but there are thousands of ways to miss it. There are guys who take too much risk. There are guys who are gun-shy and don’t take enough. Some size positions too large, some too small. So to ask someone on here what you should do…homeboy…only YOU know the answer to that. Again, it’s not about your ideas, it’s about execution, and that’s a function of YOUR temperament.
How do you develop this self-knowledge? Grind your nose in your trade blotter…both errors of commission and omission. No one does this, because it sucks, yet this is why people remain in stasis and never improve their equity curve.
7. Fund Management: What Really Matters?
It’s not what you’d think…What matters is, when the time is right, can you rise to the occasion? In a crisis, is your head clear? What do you make when you’re right vs what do you lose when you’re wrong? Simple shit…very little to do with ideas…ideas come and go.
It’s crazy, but guys I’ve seen perform at the highest level, like, there’s very basic questions you ask yourself: “what mood am I in? What emotion am I feeling RIGHT NOW? Am I letting shit from my personal life seep into my mental/emotional state? Am I in the correct frame of mind to be making decisions, or should I take time off, read, and trade smaller?”
The hardest part of trading is knowing when NOT to trade, for real…that could be your internal state, or it could just be market pragmatism, reading the tape and recognizing… “what I do” just isn’t working right now…I should cut gross/flatten out and go for a walk. PATIENCE.
In my experience, if you talk to anyone in a COO/risk capacity at pods, they will all tell you the same thing: the biggest detractor from PM returns is overtrading. Consistently.
8. Advice for Neophytes: Trade Quietly
As far as advice for anyone looking to improve or reach the next level of the game…in all seriousness, get off Twitter, put capital at risk and rub your nose in your daily trade blotter…hold yourself accountable, don’t ever make excuses. This is the only way you’ll improve. Your capital base doesn’t even matter, it’s all % gains/losses…like, a PA account of $10k, $1M, even $10M…you’re not at the level where slippage/liquidity is a major issue…so if you can grind out impressive % on a small base, nothing should change as you scale…all process.
TRADE QUIETLY. Ignore all the dingbats on here…all improvement comes in solitude, in a dark room by yourself staring at your losses for the day/week/year…look for patterns. Are you swinging too big, too small, like, what is the specific way YOU are missing the bullseye? Then build around that…
9. Get Off Twitter: Protect Your Mental
I was super active on here 10 years ago and in general have always been a power user slash addict…that’s changed
I view this app as a vice, toxic, sugary, an unhealthy use of your time. I try and spend as LITTLE time on here as possible each day, 30-60 minutes not including DM convos
There’s a few reasons…one, if you’re someone who writes/posts a lot, the ephemeral nature of the app is useless. Everything you put out disappears into the ether within 24 hours, never to be seen again. If you write, seek permanence…longform, books, whatever it is
Priorities…this app is made primarily for news and hot takes on news. I don’t give a shit about any of that stuff anymore…politics, celebrity news, idiots arguing with one another, all this stuff is incredibly vapid and again, it all disappears within 24 hours.
I look back at all the time I spent on here ten years ago…thousands of hours…WASTED on loser shit. I define loser shit as like, criticizing people above your station…throwing shots at Ackman, or Chamath, or whoever…how Einhorn had a bad quarter…bro…get real. You are a NOBODY. Worry about yourself. I used to do this shit so I’m not just coming at you all – you can do better, I promise. Go build something, write something, call your family, your friends, go for a walk, read a book, do something, ANYTHING besides wasting your life on empty calories and loser shit.
It is a guarantee that when you open this app, within 30 seconds you will see guys being hypocrites, being disingenuous, dishonest, whatever it is…LEAVE IT ALL ALONE. You will drive yourself crazy and spin your wheels for the rest of your life getting aggravated over things you can’t fix. A wise man once wrote “if everyone swept their own front porch, the world would be clean”… worry about your own shit and leave the rest to God…trust and believe that people always get what’s coming to them.
10. Most Importantly, Focus on Yourself
Don’t be a critic…think about how you can get in the arena. Sit down and write two questions: first, “What will they say about me at my funeral?” second, “What do I WANT them to say about me at your funeral?” There will be a big gap. Those are your goals, those are your priorities, start chopping wood.
When you are building, when your mind is on the mission, you don’t give a fuck about Ackman or Chamath or Trump or whoever…you don’t have time. They’re irrelevant…all this Twitter shit is. Get in the lab and focus.
Yes, there is some good stuff on here, but I’ve found the risk/reward from a time perspective…it ain’t there…especially now, there’s so much hatred, it’s crazy. You have to slog through 60 minutes of like, raw anger, toxic, negative energy, to find one good tweet. Try this sometime….measure your mood before you log in, then measure your mood 30-60 mins later. I’ve found that a lot of mornings I’m optimistic and then this app just makes me feel drained…sad….negative…like a weight on my soul, a bucket of cold water. Social media is horribly toxic but you only notice after you’ve abstained…protect your energy, for real.
Best advice I have, keep a giant pile of books nearby, all genres…when you feel the “urge” to scroll, grab a book. 3 daily hours on Twitter is 1095 hours per year…my brother…if you spend 1000 hours reading books, you will elevate, you will transform, your entire worldview will shift. Buffett and Munger gave you “the game” but no one listens….go somewhere quiet (Omaha), read an absolute boatload every day, and especially in the vein of Munger, like, read widely…become a polymath, it WILL improve your investing…there are diminishing marginal returns to all finance/biz shit. Above all, have some discipline and be thoughtful about your time.
AND SO… with all of that said…I’m still here, my DM’s are open, I check in every few days and try and post something useful. The benefit of time and experience and knowledge of self is you can figure out almost immediately who is who on here…30 seconds of scrolling a guy’s feed is more than enough to find people who share your attitude… either they find me or I find them.
If I can be helpful, reach out. Have a blessed day fellas.
For more insights, visit gregoryblotnick.com.