"I will no longer manage money for other people or institutions. I have enough of my own wealth to manage. Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they look forward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life."

  - Resignation letter, Andrew Ladhe

If you're going to go out, go out on top, and do it with style.  This man was made of style.

"I will no longer manage money for other people or institutions. I have enough of my own wealth to manage. Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they look forward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life."

  - Resignation letter, Andrew Ladhe

If you're going to go out, go out on top, and do it with style.  This man was made of style.



Its oh so true, how many times has it happened. These high powered, driven people kill themnselves to make money/power/position for years and drop dead at 50 or 55? I agree with this guy f it all and go live your life no one is going to remember you 50 years from now. Hell youre lucky if your ancestors remember you. As in Gee "whos' that standing in that picture with Grandma."
Ya gotta grab life by the balls while you still can and get every bit of  fun ouuta it.
Reminds me of this song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnFZsrs32Co

Ya gotta grab life by the balls while you still can and get every bit of  fun ouuta it.


(Interesting turn of phrase, not that there's anything wrong with that...)

But yeah, that's why I dug Lahde's letter so much.  Imagine if the movie 21 had had a happy ending -- for Lahde, it did, because he was smart enough to walk away from the table after having achieved his objective.

I may be attributing this to Buffett, but his philosophy on inheritance was to leave his kids "enough money to do anything, but not so much money that they could get away with doing nothing."

As Nolan Bushnell of Atari put it: "Business is a great game.  The rules are simple, and you use money to keep score."

You could get very good at those old 80s video games, but no matter good you were, you couldn't win.  For games that don't have endings (or game-ending bugs like Pac-Man's 256th level), the computer always won, because the player would eventually fall asleep.  The only way to truly beat the machine was to walk away from the game while it was still playing, and letting the next player have the joy of playing out the rest of your quarter.

This guy not only won the game, and left his successors 866 extra men in reserve, he understood that it was, first and foremost, a game, and not to be taken any more seriously than that.

Did you read that whole letter? That is one cynical fellow. But then, it's understandable why he feels that way. After all, he saw from the inside, the greed/corruption/stupidity of people in the financial world, and then made a fortune betting on it. "Low hanging fruit," indeed....