10.18.2007

hedge funds and hormone pills

Heard about this weird-ass story last week out of New York, where it was apparently all over the news... According to a lawsuit, SAC Capital, one of the world's richest and most secretive hedge funds, is allegedly telling its traders to swallow female hormones to trade better: TRADING PLACES. What the hell? One of the top bosses at SAC, Ping Jiang, criticized traders for being too aggressive, and insisted that they use "a soft feminine touch" to score in their trading pitches. How feminine? A junior trader, Andrew Z. Tong, claims that the boss demanded he take take female hormone pills... which apparently caused him to start wearing dresses, grow distant from his wife, and begin a sexual relationship with Jiang. Oh, the things people will do to climb that ladder.

Jiang is listed by Trader Monthly magazine as one of Wall Street's top 100 traders, with an estimated income of $100 million a year... so maybe his feminine touch is working. But I guess Tong isn't cool with their arrangement anymore. He has filed a sexual harrassment case against his boss, claiming the hormone pills wrecked his life and made him impotent with his wife, who wanted to have a baby. Dude, I don't care how much you're getting paid... this is just too bizarre. But you know what? Something tells me this stopped being about money a long time ago. More on the sexual harrassment case here: Trader's Sex/Hormones Claims Being Investigated

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