He was one of the most consistently successful managers in...

He was one of the most consistently successful managers in Australia post-GFC, virtually year in year out some clear outperformance over the index and fees.

A decade worth of work was destroyed over poor decisions in trying to time the market (perhaps the most juvenile, noob error a manager or even retail investor can possibly make) in terms of cash allocation and the bizarre purchase of Chinese stocks for no discernible reason. There's more to it than this, but 18 months with an underperformance of -5/6% wouldn't be a company killer like what has potentially occurred here.

Unless you're a psychopath I think its extremely difficult to look at what has happened here as not being incredibly sad, particularly for Hamish even if its his fault. Whether or not people want to admit it the company was a serious success story for an extended period of time, it was rare for Hamish to be proven so heavily off base for more than a year or two. He's always flirted with the neighsayers from AFR and for years and years proved them to be wrong.

Now he destroyed through one or two decisions (arguably one) in a single year a decade + track record, decimated his own net worth, the value of his company and destroyed shareholder capital for many people who were long term holders and believers. No one especially someone as successful as Hamish wants this to happen or suspects this can happen.

I personally found myself consistently agreeing with Hamish on Macro and stock based calls for years and years, but did find that increasingly over the past 18 months Hamish's views became unaligned with reality and he had trouble deciding whether to dig in the heels or admit failure, his calls were very much becoming a product of emotion and grappling with mistakes that can't be undone (massive cash allocation) and anyone in that position would find it traumatic.

You don't have to feel sorry for him over what are legitimately idiotic and rookie mistakes, but you should in terms of the broader picture. He should have been better than this, he had the track record to not f3ck up this hard. Just the nature of active fund management even a single bad year or set of mistakes can cost an entire businesses existence.