Fireside Chat, Conference Presentation
Finerman's Rules: Secrets I'd Only Tell My Daughters About Business and Life (updated)
- Event & Context: Mike Clowden, CEO of the Milken Institute, opened the forum with updates on recent and upcoming institute events, including the third London Summit (1,000 attendees), the fifth Partnering for Cures meeting in New York (November), and a scheduled forum on October 24 featuring IDEO's David and Tom Kelly.
- Moderator Introduction: Jody Miller, founder and CEO of Business Talent Group and former special assistant to President Bill Clinton, introduced Karen Feinerman, noting their long-standing personal connection dating back to Washington DC apartment exchanges.
- Author Background: Feinerman is the author of Feynman's Rules, chairwoman on CNBC, and the founder and CEO of Metropolitan Capital, a successful hedge fund where she is the only woman CEO.
- Motivation for Career: Feinerman entered Wall Street primarily driven by the "Calvinist philosophy" instilled by her mother that emphasized financial independence, stating her childhood realization was that "money was power."
- Risk Management Lesson: Feinerman described her worst trade involving United Airlines in a leveraged buyout; she lost $80,000 on a $2,500 hedge position after failing to anticipate the deal's collapse, teaching her the critical importance of modeling all failure scenarios.
- Best Trade Strategy: Her best trade was on Golar LNG, a tanker company capitalizing on natural gas demand; margins expanded significantly when the Fukushima disaster caused Japan to switch to natural gas, increasing daily rates from $20,000 to $100,000.
- Diversity Hiring Philosophy: Feinerman employs women as her primary staff because she finds them to have "less ego," "less politics," and "more loyalty," though she notes that women often need male mentors because "it's just math" regarding the number of men in senior positions.
- CNBC Career Evolution: Feinerman joined CNBC by chance after being recruited from a magazine article; she overcame the challenge of balancing media appearances with her hedge fund by having hair and makeup done in her office to maximize desk time.
- Gender Dynamics in Finance: Feinerman argues that women are often held back in investment management because they lead with risk analysis rather than "pounding the table" with confidence and upside potential, a behavior she advises women to emulate.
- Work-from-Home Stance: Feinerman advocates against working from home, citing the difficulty for children to understand a parent's physical presence as "ignored" and the loss of "chance encounters" that foster office culture and mentorship.
- Parenting & Finance: Feinerman teaches her children the cost of goods by making them work for items and paying them 10% interest on savings, noting that her daughter once believed a bed cost $1 million and her son leveraged funds from their grandmother to earn interest.
- Maternity Leave Advice: Feinerman advises women to hide any ambivalence about returning to work after maternity leave, as revealing uncertainty can compromise career trajectory and invite resentment from colleagues who must cover the workload.
- Financial Literacy for Women: Feinerman urges women to stop viewing money management as a male domain, advising them to ask specific questions about assets, strategies, and advisors rather than defaulting to their partners.
- Workplace Bias Data: Feinerman highlighted a Yale study where identical resumes sent as "Jane" received lower offers ($4,000 less) and fewer hires than when sent as "Joe," illustrating persistent gender bias in STEM fields.
- Definition of Success: Feinerman endorses Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" approach, arguing that women must become comfortable being perceived as ambitious even if it carries social risks, noting that men generally do not fear being "hated" for success.
- Multitasking Correction: Feinerman stated she has abandoned multitasking, citing brain research that indicates it doubles brain power usage and causes significant "backtracking" that wastes time.
- Q&A on Media Consumption: Feinerman advised retail investors to limit watching financial news channels like CNBC, characterizing them as businesses that must manufacture content to fill airtime and often encourage unnecessary trading.
- Q&A on Leadership Bias: Feinerman discussed the "thin air at the top," acknowledging that while high-performing women are often criticized for being aggressive, men in similar roles rarely face the same scrutiny for their behavior.
- Future Outlook: Feinerman predicts that the retirement of baby boomers and the increasing number of women with graduate degrees will eventually force companies to hire women into senior roles due to a talent squeeze.
- Personal Fulfillment: Feinerman identifies the best part of her day as returning home from CNBC to see her children, though she noted a shift in priorities as her children age and become less dependent on her daily presence.