This Hedge Fund Manager Got Away With Insider Trading… Then Made Billions

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
Sam, what's up, man? I got some good news for you.

**Sam Parr** (0:03)
Great.

**Shaan Puri** (0:03)
Click that link I just put in there.
It's your lucky day, bro. Here's an article in the Financial Times called The Alpha of Ugliness. And it turns out that being ugly outperforms. They analyzed a bunch of investors, and the investors who were conventionally ugly outperformed by 2%, I think. So.

**Sam Parr** (0:26)
Yeah, I saw that. But here's the problem.
I'm a five, I'm 5'10. I'm not ugly enough to be made fun of, but I'm definitely not hot enough to be six foot.

**Shaan Puri** (0:36)
To get any advantages.

**Sam Parr** (0:37)
Yeah, so.
That's the issue. Should I get uglier or hotter? I guess uglier.

**Shaan Puri** (0:53)
Yeah, when I was in second grade, I really liked this one girl, and I was like, hey, I want to ask that girl to the whatever, the dance or something. We had like some party in like third grade, and now that I think about it, that's kind of young to be asking girls, but that's what happened. So I went up to her or no, my friend went up to her and he was like, hey, Shawn likes you.
And she goes, Shawn's ugly. And then that was third grade. And then I'm still reeling. I'm 30, I'm 35 now.
I'm hoping at 36, I'm off that, but still recovering, I would say.
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**Sam Parr** (2:06)
So Anand, the founder of CB Insights, tweeted this out, I think a week ago, and he does really in-depth tweets where he looks at data and stuff. And he had this one thing where he said, he said, I've found this data that talks about how good you look and your returns.
And a lot of people think that the hotter you are or the taller you are, the better returns you're gonna have. Which makes sense, taller people get better treatment. And he said, no, it's the opposite. There's a correlation between attractiveness, I guess an opposite correlation. So between attractiveness and rate of returns for investment managers.

**Shaan Puri** (2:40)
Well, yeah, because the investment doesn't know how tall you are. You know, the tall guy probably could raise more money, but not necessarily make more money.

**Sam Parr** (2:46)
Well, Anand, I guess, is it the uglier you are, the harder you've had to work?

**Shaan Puri** (2:51)
Yeah, that's what I've been clinging to. That's the story I've been telling myself.

**Sam Parr** (2:57)
So speaking of hedge funds or investments, let me ask you a question. Do you know anything about hedge funds?

**Shaan Puri** (3:06)
Not a lot.

**Sam Parr** (3:07)
Okay, what you need to know is they work really hard and it's a really intense lifestyle. So you understand that, I'm sure.
If I paid you $10 million a year, if you could earn $10 million a year, would you be a hedge fund, would you work at a hedge fund as a portfolio manager? Would you live that lifestyle for $10 million a year?

**Shaan Puri** (3:27)
I don't know the lifestyle, but probably not because I really like my lifestyle. So I would not trade it for a worse lifestyle, if that makes sense. But let's assume 10 years ago, would I have made that trade? Yeah, I would have made that trade. And that's what I think they do. I think they make that trade earlier in their career and then that's what they do.

**Sam Parr** (3:44)
So I'm reading this book about Steve Cohen. Do you know who Steve Cohen is?

**Shaan Puri** (3:47)
I know that he owns sports teams and he's one of the most successful hedge fund guys. And I think billions is based off of him, right?