The wisdom of Hamza Lemssouguer, 35-year-old trading genius
Hamza Lemssouguer breeds parrots. That’s not typical of a credit trader, but neither is market performance – or the depth of his wisdom at such a young age.
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It probably helps that Lemssouguer, just 35 years old, has been in charge of his own hedge fund since 2022. Lemssouguer's credit fund Arini (named after the parrots he breeds) Capital, which has gone from strength to strength. It now has $15bn in assets under management and has launched a recent partnership with Lazard, the boutique investment bank.
Speaking to students at the LSE’s Alternative Investments Conference earlier today, Lemssouguer admitted that not every day in his career was a win – and neither was that important.
“We don't create anything that is that revolutionary in our job,” Lemssouguer told students. “It's about discipline. It's about waking up every day, doing the same things and then keeping it and improving it. And also accepting that feedback, because ultimately you will be told that you make stupid decisions.”
A lot of bad decisions get made, inevitably. It’s part of the job. And by the time that Lemssouguer checks his phone in the morning, “I probably check that I made five stupid decisions last week, and what's important is to adjust and then move on and continue, not forget about them. You have to adjust, but move on.”
Being able to do that is what makes him a grand slam winner, or whatever the equivalent is in finance. “As Roger Federer said, he only won 54% of the points. He’s possibly the best champion in tennis we've ever seen. It's not about winning every point, it's about winning in general. And part of that winning in general is taking on the losses and adjusting your process,” Lemssouguer explained.
In turn, losses have to be managed in and of themselves. “Losses cannot be terminal. So how can you make sure that losses are not terminal? The initial analysis that you do before investing. Before we invest, and I think before you invest in anything, is think what if this all goes wrong.”
That kind of pessimism is key to working in credit in general. In fact, it differentiates them. Deciding between a career in equities or credit is all about deciding whether “are you – not personally, but professionally – an optimist person or pessimistic person?”, according to Lemssouguer.
Not that you have to be depressed to work in credit – “You can be optimistic in life and pessimistic at work,” Lemssouguer says – but if “you’re an optimistic person in general, and you like to see the dreams and ideas in the upside, credit is probably not the best [for you]. Because credit is really just about getting your money back, and if you dream too much you can get burned. In equities, you need the dream – you cannot be too pessimistic, or you say no to Amazon in the 90’s.”
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