Tiger Woman on Wall Street: Winning Business Strategies from Shanghai to New York and Back

CHAPTER 8Learning, Burning, and Crashing

ONE SUNDAY IN THE SUMMER OF 2007, I WENT TO BEST BUY TO perform “channel checks”—analyst-speak for a third-party investigation of distribution channels to verify how well a product sells. This time, I bought my research partner and boyfriend, Andrew, to join me in playing the role of a married couple shopping for a GPS gadget—to help us navigate from Manhattan to our weekend house in Vermont, no doubt.

I had met Andrew, an Irish-born American from North Dakota, at a colleague’s party. Tall, fit, and blue-eyed, Andrew was a senior investment professional at a multibillion dollar hedge fund founded by two former Goldman traders in the summer of 2003.

I remember our first conversation at a cocktail party ...