Chapter 11 Chapter Eleven "Menopause"

"I've become entangled with the company. It lives on me, I live with it, it's inseparable day and night...it's my lover. I'm afraid of losing, I'm afraid of failing, and I try to avoid mistakes. It's a Sad life." The first part of the wife and children By the end of 1970, Soros & Co. were doing well, and George seemed to be doing the same.According to the logic of ordinary people, he should be able to relax and live a peaceful and comfortable life.But he can't.His parents doted on him and his elder brother, but he couldn't treat his wife and children like this.So engrossed in his work that he leaves little time for his wife, let alone his children.

In 1977, his marriage broke down.As he puts it: "I've become one with the company. It lives on me, and I live with it, day and night...it's my lover. I'm afraid of losing and making mistakes, and trying to avoid mistakes .It's a miserable life." A year later, in 1978, he and his wife divorced. On the day of his divorce, he fell into the arms of a 22-year-old woman named Su Nai Weibo, whom he had met at a dance some time ago.Her father made handbags, shoes and shoe accessories in New York.Suzha studied art history at Barnard University, and later, assisted in the production of works by "twentieth-century painters" such as Mark Rosenko and Willem de Colin. "I just divorced my wife today. Will you join me Are you having lunch? said Soros. Five years later, he and Suza Webb were married in a non-religious ceremony in Southampton, Long Island.

In 1979, Soros was only 49 years old.He had enough money to spend his whole life, but for the first time he felt the pain of intense work.The company grows and needs more employees.The staff increased from the original 3 to 12.He is no longer a small business owner who only needs to talk to one or two people.Now he had to worry about something new: assigning tasks to others.According to some of his assistants.He has a little ability in this area. Money rolls in, demanding more and more investment decisions.It is indeed not easy to make the correct arrangement of promising stocks. That's all, Rodgers was giving him a headache.Generally, differences between them can be resolved.Now, however, there are tensions.Rogers didn't want to build a company of this size.When Soros tried to take in another partner and train him to be his successor, he and Rogers got into an embarrassing situation, which Rogers did not agree to. "He didn't approve of anyone I considered and couldn't tolerate anyone else around him," Soros said. "He made life too difficult for other people."

The dissolution of their partnership is comical, since 1980 was the most successful year for Soros and Rogers.But in May of that year, Rogers left the firm, taking 20 percent of his capital profits, worth $14 million, and leaving Soros with 80 percent of his profits, worth $56 million. When Rogers explained his reasons for leaving the company, he believed that: the company was too large and there were too many employees, and he had to spend a lot of energy arranging their vacations and salary increases.Neither Soros nor Rogers have gone out of their way to explain in public the reasons for their split.During a brief conversation with me, Rogers had no interest in oral memory.From the tone of his speech, it is obvious that he still remembers those things and is in great pain.

Big humiliating failure in the second quarter Is it meaningful to continue to operate with Yinxin?Soros is also skeptical. He has earned enough money to spend.The day-to-day tormented him, he felt the pressure to earn other people's money, hire staff, and more.And what is all this for?Where is the reward?Where is the fun?Soros admits that "in fact, it's sort of in decline." After an incredible 12 years of hard work and success, he realized that simply being an investor was not enough to satisfy him. In 1980, when I no longer doubted my success, I thought about a personality change.What's the point of all the pain and tension I'm going through if I can't enjoy the joy of success?I asked myself.I should start enjoying the fruits of my labor, even if it means killing the goose. "

The personality shift affected Soros' business.If an investment proves to be a mistake, he will quickly adjust his mood.He has been conscientious about his job for too long, and his contact with high-level people has made him invincible for a long time.But now, he appears to be dealing with some unreliable people, at least according to his critics.In fact, he did spend a lot of time socializing with government officials, especially Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Woolker. "If you're trying to get investment advice from a government official, it's going to push you into the ghetto," says Gary Merowows, a currency manager who later joined Soros & Co.

In the summer of 1981, no one thought that Soros & Co. was going into the ghetto.Some people genuinely care, however, not all have good intentions.A humiliating failure in the U.S. Treasury market followed. Soros' problems with the U.S. Treasury market came in late 1978, when Paul Woolker decided to eliminate inflation.Loan margins rise from 9% to 21%, Solo Stan is sure that, just this summer, the country will suffer economically.When Treasuries were booming in early summer, Soros started buying.Treasury bills due in 2011 rose to $10 in June.However, by Xiawei, the price drops to $93.

The profit margins on the short-term bank loans that Soros borrowed have risen to exceed the profit pools of long-term government bonds.This situation will destroy the national economy, force the Federal Reserve Board to reduce bank profit margins, and improve the status of public debt.Yet the economy remains strong and profit margins are getting better. If Soros can maintain a balance of "active interest-bearing operation" in the bond market, then he will be fine.If the interest on government bonds is higher than the interest on borrowing money from a broker, then the interest-earning operation is active and therefore profitable.Clearly, Soros is right when the profit margin is 12%.Because the interest on public debt rose to 14%, and soon reached 15%, but the interest on loans climbed to 20%, resulting in a "negative interest-bearing operation" without any profit.This year, Soros lost 3 to 5 percentage points per share of government bonds.He lost an estimated $80 million of his partners' money.

As a result, the partners cringed when they met him, and several key European partners decided to withdraw funds.One of Soros' assistants recalled: "He felt defeated. He felt forced to make a wrong decision in an inappropriate place. He often said: You should not enter the securities market unless you are willing to suffer. He never Mentally and materially willing to suffer, but his investors were not. He realized that his only Achilles' heel was this group of unreliable investors. Being beaten in the market irritated him greatly, and losing money made him He was irritated, but not ruined. He felt people were abandoning him. He didn't know what to do with the market."

Ironically, Soros' predictions of a worsening of the country's economic conditions have been confirmed.But the time difference is 6 to 9 months.He was right to predict that higher loan interest rates would plummet, but not until 1982, after Soros took a big hit on the public debt front. On that dreadful summer of 1981, a leading business magazine, which featured him on its cover, used a brightly colored term to describe him—on the eve of a summer reversal.This kind of irony made Soros doubly painful and embarrassed. Untimely flattery in the third quarter In June 1981, Soros appeared on the cover of Institutional Investor magazine.The cover of the magazine reads "The World's Largest Financial Operator" under his smiling face.

The subtitle reads: "George Soros has never had a loss year, and his year-to-year wins have been impressive. Let's see how he has sprinted through the securities business over the past 10 years. And in the process, earned himself 1 million-dollar assets. The article was meant to make people think of Soros as a superstar in business, "as Borg is on the tennis court, Jack Nicklaus is on the golf course and Fred Meister is on the dance floor, George Soros is equally brilliant in securities management. This article explains how Soros accumulated assets.From assets of only US$15 million in 1974, by the end of 1980, Soros had grown to US$380 million. "For the past 12 years, Soros has run securities for clients such as Helderling and Pearson in the Ansterton and Bank Rothschild districts of Paris. He has not lost a single year: 1980 People are astonished as high as 102%. Soros converted his compensation into personal assets, worth $100 million." Those who have read this must have thought: Soros is an enigma, a magician who keeps his secrets secret, cunning and witty, but not dishonest, smart or brilliant.The author wrote: "Here is a little more about Soros's mysterious activities. No one can know exactly where he will invest and how long he will stay in an investment activity. As an overseas investment management Or, he doesn't ask to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He avoids the Wall Street pundits. Those who really know him in business admit they don't get too close to him. As for reputation, it's generally believed that he doesn't give a damn. , and had a great time / For a long time, Soros refused to be interviewed by the magazine "Institutional Investor", he said: "If you deal with the market, you should be unknown. Section 4 Eager to Understand How much Soros wanted to be unknown that summer.However, he was famous at the beginning.This caused the world's greatest stockbroker to run into great trouble. The loss that summer hurt Soros immensely.Because, as "Forbes" magazine wrote in the editor's note on October 12, 1981: "If the world does not understand his brilliant achievements, it will not care about his reversal." However, due to the "Public Institutional Investor" The cover reported that the world already knew all the achievements of George Soros, so that summer, the world was also paying attention to him. The danger of a mass investor revolt appears to be growing.Although Soros made numerous trips to Europe to beg a Swiss client not to leave, the investor had lost faith in the company.Other customers followed suit.An aide said of the time: "That was the first time Soros got a sense of who was a loyal investor, and that's when some of his partners left him. He made them a lot of money over the past 10 or 15 years." Soros was in a lot of pain. They withdrew the funds and hurt him a lot. For a long, long time after that, Soros was not very active in making money." 1981 was the worst year for the company. Quantum's profits fell by 22.9%. This was the first and only year in which the company did not make a profit.Many of Soros's investors were what one observer called "Europa jackass whimsy." They believed Soros was too deep to invest himself, so more than a third withdrew their money.Soros later said he could not blame them.Their departure took with them nearly half of the company's assets -- $193.3 million. George Soros talked about getting out of midfield, it seemed natural, what to do?He thought about it for a long time and was very serious.He wants to drive away all investors.In doing so, he would at least not have to face the farewell ceremony in the future. The time seemed ripe to write a book, and he had long wanted to start writing.He even thought of a temporary title for the book.He was going to call it The Cycle of Empire.