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It's been a nostalgia-fest of '70s era Hawai'i for me these past couple of weeks.
First, there was the relaunch of Hawai'i Five-O (total thumbs up). Then I read Wild Meat and Bully Burgers by Lois-Ann Yamanaka, written in pidgin and very like my childhood (minus the hunting and violence). And finally – because these things come in threes – a cringe-worthy email from my cousin Laurie, whose subject line was something to the effect of "Support Kill Haole Day."
In case you didn't also grow up in Hawai'i, Kill Haole Day refers to the last day of school, when the Caucasian kids were fair game (pun totally intended). As someone who is half-Caucasian and half-Okinawan, it was hard to know where I stood. Was I supposed to beat myself up?
The truth is, I don't remember anyone actually getting beat up; it was more the anticipated threat that hung in the air those last few days of school, ruining the start of summer vacation. And, to be fair to my cousin, her e-mail wasn't condoning Kill Haole Day – she was fundraising for her coming of age movie.
In any case, the nostalgia and brooding about race over the past few weeks did get me thinking about how the topic of "skin" comes up in my adult life: I've lost count of how many times prospective clients have asked, "How much skin do you have in the game?"
I hate this question. In the same way that a mixed-race kid is never "enough" of one race or another, there is no clear standard of how much financial skin in the game is appropriate. What really matters – and what prospective clients are trying to get at – is, "Do you care as much about my money as you do your own?"
Unfortunately, the "give a crap" factor is hard to measure in a money manager. So skin in the game, while both misguided and ambiguous, becomes a seemingly objective proxy.
Just the other day, for example, Morningstar ran an article comparing Harry Lange's "paltry" $500,000 to $1,000,000 investment in Fidelity Magellan to Bruce Berkowitz's $139 million invested in the Fairholme Fund. The ipso facto suggestion was that Berkowitz would care more about the money you placed in his fund than Lange would.
Now I don't know either man, nor have I looked at their records recently, but I assume Morningstar wouldn't use these two examples unless they supported its thesis. But in response to the article, and as my childhood friends might have said, "Eh brah, wassa matta you?"
