Mahjong, Money, and Art of Playing the Right Hand A few years ago, some friends invited me to learn Mahjong. At first, I was completely lost. I had no idea what I was doing. The teachers told us what to discard, explained the routines, and threw around jargon that sounded like a completely different language. Bams. Craks. Dots. Charleston. Jokers. The card looked like hieroglyphics. There I sat, staring at it as if it had been written by aliens. But that's what surprised me m

On Wall Street, traders talk about the "pain trade." It's the outcome nobody wants because they're positioned for something else. Ironically, it's often the direction the market eventually goes. Lately, I've been thinking about how the pain trade applies to life. Ten years ago, during my midlife crisis, I found myself confronting something I had spent decades trying to outrun. Carl Jung called it "the shadow." The hidden part of ourselves we don't want to acknowledge. The fea

If you’ve ever ridden a mechanical bull, you quickly learn one thing: the only way to stay on is to counteract the force. When the bull bucks left, you shift right. When it drives forward, you lean back. You don’t fight it by going rigid, and you certainly don’t just hold on and hope for the best. You read it, react, and play offense. Sound familiar? Riding a bull market is no different. When the market dips, the instinct for many is to panic, sell, and brace for impact — ess

Running through Central Park on the west side of Manhattan — the financial capital of the world, and arguably the easiest city on earth to compare yourself to others. Skyscrapers to your left. Young ambition on the right. And there I was, ten years ago, deeply jealous of a more successful friend. But in investing, we compare companies with one another to see if one is cheaper or more expensive. If there is a catalyst to either short the expensive one and/or buy the cheaper st

A student in the Emory financial planning class asked me in front of everyone: "How should I think about my career if I don't come from money?" I looked at her and said: "Your being poor is your superpower." She looked at me like I had two heads. But also backed it up with the famous line from the 1987 movie Wall Street when Michael Douglas (as Gordon Gekko) tells Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) to avoid hiring Ivy League graduates, "Most of these Harvard M.B.A. types, they don't add

My husband is from San Diego. The movie Almost Famous is one of our family favorites — a throwback to SD in the 70s. The whole film is about a young journalist who gets the band to reveal their true insecurities. That vulnerability? It made them real. And it made the Rolling Stone article unforgettable. I've been living my own version of this the past few days. First, I spoke to Professor Usha Rackliffe, a financial planning class at Emory's Goizueta Business School my th

Beverly Hills High School Graduation 1991 The Best Lessons Came From What Mom Got Wrong A friend once asked me: "Does your mom find your posts offensive?" I told her the truth: My mom isn't on LinkedIn. But even if she was, she knows — I wouldn't be where I am today without learning what NOT to do from her. She was my anti-role model. And here's what I've come to believe: Humans can learn from others' mistakes. Watching someone else fail is a shortcut. You skip the emotional

Jackson Hole Dec 2024 The most valuable model I ever built had nothing to do with Excel. On Wall Street, I loved modeling. Not walking the runway—financial modeling (plus I'm way too short to model) Projecting cash flows. Stress-testing assumptions. Seeing a company's potential future. Now as a CFP, I do the same thing for people. Can they retire? Will they be okay? The model tells the story. But this spring break, I discovered a deeper kind of modeling. Henry went skiing in

Beverly Hills High School Pep Rally Fall 1990 I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what really drove me to Wall Street. Why I chose a world of sharp elbows. Why I was willing to compete in rooms where I wasn’t “one of the guys.” Why I stayed—and ultimately thrived—in a game that wasn’t built for me. For years, I was told a simple story: Finance is one of the best games in town. If you can learn it, play it, and stay in it—you can build real independence. And I still believe