Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager: From the Top, to the Bottom, and Back Again

CHAPTER 5

DISCOVERY

My maiden visit to Jon Dawson’s Southport, Connecticut, hedge fund shop was in the spring of 2000. A few months earlier, the firm ’s name officially, legally changed for the third time, this time going from Dawson-Samberg Capital Management to Dawson-Giammalva Capital Management. The surroundings were way different than the environment at CSFB. I knew the buyside life was a bit more relaxed than the frenetic sellside, but I didn’t expect a group of 20 or so people sitting around quietly in a three-story former factory that had been partially converted into office space. It was cozy, and I felt like I was back in Thunder Bay at my buddy’s moose hunting lodge. Dawson wore a button-down shirt, denim pants, and cowboy boots. His spacious office, decorated with photos spanning a long career rubbing shoulders with corporate America, was on the second level, just off from the trading floor. Analysts, administration, and operations folks were on the ground level or upstairs, on the third floor. When Dawson wanted to do a trade, he opened the door of his window-enclosed office and shouted out the order to his traders sitting just outside, loud and deliberate, piercing the otherwise laid-back aura.

I took the train to Southport specifically to meet Dawson. His protégé, Russell Herman, was trying to get me to come work with him in Dawson-Giammalva’s New York office. I was also being recruited by the head trader at Viking Global Investors to come work on its execution ...