Dan Friedman, Millennium's head of credit, on the virtue of 4.30am starts
If you're a fixed income trader, Daniel Friedman is the new man to know at hedge fund Millennium. Friedman, who is reportedly relocating from London to New York is part of the firm's senior management team. He will be running a new credit business reporting to Millennium co-CIO Justin Gmelich. In this context, it seems very likely that he will be hiring.
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If you want to work with Friedman, be warned that he is a fan of hard work, particularly among juniors.
In an interview published two years ago, Friedman described how, when he began his career in high yield at Lehman Brothers in 2004, he would arrive at the office at 4.35am.
When you work in high yield, Friedman the natural starting point is research. Research provides you with a "fundamental background." At 4.35am each morning, Friedman said he would print "all of the PNL reports, all of the credit sites research, all of the other printed research for every single trader and lay it on their desk and then go do my job in research."
Nor would Friedman hurry home at the end of each day. Instead, he said he would "pull up a chair" and ask the senior traders "inane questions" like, "why did you send this? Like, what do you mean by this? Like, what does that do?"
Friedman said the senior traders would stay until 7pm-9pm, and it seems that he would too. This worked in his favour: "When a spot opened up on the desk, they were probably just like, man, we should just give it to this guy. Heâs here all the time."
Friedman is unsurprisingly, therefore, a fan of "grit." If you want to make it, he feels strongly that you need to "keep trying to get better." You also need to know a lot about market structure, capital structure and fundamental credit. And you need the humility to drop a trade that's going badly instead of defending it at the wrong level.
This approach has worked very well for Friedman. After Lehman, he went to Barclays and became head of European high yield and distressed credit. After Barclays he went to Goldman and became a partner. After Goldman, he climbed the pole at Millennium.
If you encounter Friedman in New York, you know how to impress him. Make sure you read everything. And be in the office at least 15 hours a day.
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