Why Would A Genius Segregate His Money From His Mouth?

So recently I was talking to some investment banker who had an ego precisely seven times as large as mine - if you can believe it.

About the Google IPO, he chauvinistically scoffed, "Their IPO FAILED."

What he meant by that was that the IPO didn't raise as much money for Google as he thinks it should have. His chauvinism came from the fact that Google circumvented the Wall Street cartel (i.e. him and his cronies) in going public. Google utilized what is known as a dutch auction. The initial offering price came in at $85 per share and, as you can readily see, it skyrocketed right away.



I-Banker - It was obvious from the beginning that the IPO would severely undervalue the company. Google was stupid to not use a traditional investment banker-led allocation of shares.

CaptiousNut - Well, did you buy the stock personally?

I-Banker - No. What?

CaptiousNut - If it was going to be such an 'obvious' underpricing, then why didn't you buy as much as you could? Why didn't you back up the truck? You are allowed to personally trade stocks, right?

I-Banker - Yeah, I can buy whatever I want but I didn't buy any.

CaptiousNut - Well, that doesn't make any sense. I didn't know too much about about the IPO process but I was at least smart enough to buy it at $177.

Now I had been talking to this pedantic putz for a while and was getting chafed by his smugness - so I just had to slap him down a bit. Having worked with hundreds of self-made multi-millionaire traders, I have met some real monuments to arrogance, but this guy would have held his own with any of them.

Heck, all he had to say was, "Yeah, I should have bought it..", BUT his ego just wouldn't allow it.

There are very few things in this world I enjoy more than putting a buffoon in his place - though ideally, I like to embarrass them in front of a group (or on the World Wide Web).