Frankly, I was a bit disappointed as Mr. Dangote’s carriage did not fit the profile of someone likely to appear on ‘the lifestyle of the rich and famous’. For me, two things seemed odd for a Nigerian billionaire. First, he came to the venue early, much earlier than most of his bankers, and second, he mingled freely with commoners. After that day, I met Mr. Dangote on various occasions, at official functions at the Nigerian Stock Exchange, and at a few social functions. And each time I greatly admired the man’s simplicity.

 

One memorable encounter was an intimate trialogue involving me, Aliko and my ex-boss (ok! truthfully, it was more a dialogue between the two and I was just taking notes). We talked on various topics from his daughter’s upcoming wedding, to how we could make him richer by coalescing his food businesses, to the Nigerian Stock Market, which had just begun to falter after a 2-year bull run. To illustrate his view on the market, Mr. Dangote retold the story of a story he had once heard.

 

An American millionaire who while shining his shoes at the Park Avenue lobby of the Waldorf Astoria was engaged in discourse by the shoe-shiner. The shoe-shiner was excitedly boasting about how he was making extra income trading stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. After the shine, the millionaire called his broker and asked him to sell his entire equity holdings. The broker asked why and he responded by saying “once the layman on the street starts giving you stock advice, it’s time to sell because the market has become irrational”. A couple of weeks later, the stock market crashed.

 

I remember sitting in the chair, with all my CFA education, and stubbornly thinking to myself “that can’t happen to us, nothing can end our winning ways”. I was wrong. In what seemed like an illusion, I lost the cash equivalent of the cost of a Harvard MBA in half the time and with none of the prestige. In retrospect, we self-proclaimed financial experts should have seen it coming. Like the millionaire in Mr. Dangote’s story, the markets world over, in unison, had started to become irrational. Loans were given to subprime borrowers; oil prices reflected a supply shock unlikely to happen; ship owners doubled capacity to meet a trade demand that was non-existent; and everyone bought securities they didn’t understand. It was just a matter of time before common sense prevailed. Unfortunately it has come at a high cost.

 

Nowadays, I wake up every morning to my new reality; an empty brokerage account, a pile of debts, and a post-it by my desk to constantly remind me that the markets can remain irrational much longer than I can stay liquid.

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