Opinion
Khe Hy: Finance Professionals Dismiss Ideas Outside Narrow Mental Models
“A lot of finance people talk about how curious and open-minded they are, but when ideas don't fit in their very narrow mental model purview, they're very quick to dismiss it.”
Opinion
Khe Hy: Zero-Sum Finance Culture Brings Out Unattractive Qualities
“Finance had what I felt was like so much of a zero sum game mentality where it's like, if I win, someone has to lose. If I get promoted, this person gets left behind, you know, bonus pool, like points and things like that. And it just brought out a lot of unat…”
Insight
Hy: Accumulating Wealth is the Longest Route to Achieving Autonomy
“They'll just be on your terms, and so then you start to get into this space of like, I want money, but what I really want is autonomy, and so I'm using money to buy back autonomy, but is there a way to get autonomy without getting money, right? Like, there's a…”
Insight
Hy: High-Earners Use Kids to Rationalize Ambition-Driven Overwork
“Hey, remember when you're gone, like that's all you want to leave all the other stuff you're doing. It's other things. Don't call it in the name of your kids. It's your ambition. It's your ego. It's your identity. Not bad things. That's when your mind starts p…”
Opinion
Hy: Kahneman's $75K Happiness Study Fails Because Rich People Avoid Surveys
“And there's like the Kahneman research, you know, 75 K. It's like, you probably know this. It's actually wrong. And do you know why it's wrong? Because that's all survey data. Rich people don't fill out surveys. And they definitely don't fill out surveys about…”
Insight
Khe Hy: Fund of funds are structurally doomed by layered fees
“When I entered the fund of funds industry in 2003, I said to myself, and it wasn't because I was smart. I said, I don't think this industry is going to be around in 10 years. And it was mostly a view on middlemen. And it was mostly, I just, I couldn't understa…”
Insight
Hy: Side projects cannot grow into bigger businesses on 10 hours weekly
“The first was you cannot tip these ideas over into something bigger with only 10 hours a week.”
Insight
Khe Hy: Passing on promotions may suit 80% wanting time over money
“If the person like passes on the promotion, they're perceived as a failure, but that actually might be the right decision for like 80% of the population who actually wants to trade money for time.”
Insight
Hy: Founders Run Out of Emotional Solvency Before Critics Soften
“Which is basically like, people can think you're crazy longer than you can stay emotionally solvent.”
Insight
Khe Hy: Finding work fun provides an entrepreneurial competitive advantage
“If I find the thing fun and my competitor doesn't find it fun, I'm going to bet on the guy that's having fun all day.”
Opinion
Khe Hy: Financial services has an extraordinary concentration of smart people
“There's so many smart people in the financial services industry, and you just take for granted that you could just show up in an industry and just be surrounded by people that, and it's not just smart, finance smart, just like worldish smart”
Insight
Hy: Negative Self-Talk Has Negative Expected Utility for High Performers
“You do not have to beat yourself up to be a high performer. So negative self-talk has negative expected utility in your life.”
Insight
Khe Hy: Do not confuse financial survival with living a good life
“I would encourage you to not confuse survival and living a good life, because they bring together too many differing emotions, and they're almost separate problems.”
Disclosure
Hy: Spending Increased and Income Went Negative After Wall Street
“I spend more money now than I did when I was on Wall Street. I'm negative income still.”
Disclosure
Hy: Deep Technical Sprints Provided an Edge Over Peer Allocators
“My whole career was based on like doing these sprints down into these like vertical challenges, which I think ultimately became my quote unquote competitive advantage relative to my peers because I was able to sit with the trader.
The mortgage writer's trader,…”
Disclosure
Hy Transferred 18 Months of Living Expenses to Pay Himself
“I took 18 months worth of living expenses, moved them out of one account to another account and paid myself a monthly salary with like very comfortable buffers.”
