EXCERPT: Diary Of a Hedge Fund Manager

"My final day in the hedge fund business was Friday, November 2, 2007. I’d enjoyed nearly a nine-year run on Wall Street, first as a junior analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston before landing on the buyside, working for a hedge fund pioneer Jon Dawson, and then eventually co-founding a hedge fund with my partner, Harry Schwefel. Our fund was later absorbed into a multi-billion-dollar Magnetar Capital. My last-ever hedge fund job was running money as a Portfolio Manager and Managing Director at Carlyle-Blue Wave Partners.

At the time I worked at Carlyle-Blue Wave (February through November of 2007), the Carlyle Group-already well known around the world for its private equity prominence--was pushing into the hedge fund business. Its new hedge fund arm, Blue Wave, a joint venture with two ex-Deutsche Bank executives, made me Partner and gave me a seat on the fund’s Investment Committee, representing the Long/Short Equity side of the business.

On the morning on what would turn out to be my last day in the business, I ducked out of our midtown office right before noon and walked down Fifth Avenue to buy a new pair of black loafers. The soles of the ones I had on weren’t exactly worn out and might have even lasted me another six months, but with my son Jack due to be born in the coming week, I felt it was time to start the next chapter of my life.

So did my bosses at Carlyle-Blue Wave.

Later that afternoon I was told I was being let go. My days trading a “book” for a hedge fund were over. I packed up my personal belongings, books, files, and notebooks into a couple of cardboard boxes, but I left my old shoes in the office. When those dusty loafers were mailed to me a month later, I had already forgotten about them.

But I smiled."