Dan Chung survived 9/11 by chance. That's the headline's way of saying he wasn't in the office. Thirty-five of his coworkers died. He got the job of rebuilding Fred Alger Management because someone had to and he was breathing.
The story wants you to focus on his stock-picking prowess. Market winners. Two decades of returns. A triumph of the human spirit wrapped in a prospectus.
Here's what actually happened: a guy who didn't die at work continued going to work. He hired new people. They bought stocks. Some went up. Congratulations to everyone involved for performing the basic function of an asset management company.
But you're supposed to be inspired. This man rebuilt from tragedy. He found winners in the market. As if the S&P didn't triple since 2001 and any chimp with a Vanguard account couldn't have done the same thing by falling asleep at his keyboard.
Retail traders will read this and think they've learned something about resilience. About finding quality names in uncertain times. They'll open their Robinhood app and buy three shares of whatever stock Dan Chung mentioned in his last CNBC hit from 2019. Then they'll check the price sixteen times before lunch and sell at a loss when it drops forty cents.
The real skill wasn't picking winners. It was convincing people to give him money to pick winners after thirty-five of his colleagues burned to death in a building. That takes a specific kind of compartmentalization most humans don't possess.
Fred Alger Management has $25 billion in assets under management now. The company survived. Dan Chung survived. The market went up. Everyone who needed to get paid got paid.
The thirty-five people who died never got to find out if their technical indicators were bullish.
Photo by Minh Kiα»u TuαΊ₯n on Unsplash
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