n+1: So you spent the last part of the year closing down the books—is that what it’s called?

HFM: Closing the books for the year, which really mainly relates to getting prices for all of the securities, instruments, derivatives in our book so that our year-end financials are totally accurate. It’s actually the worst: a lot of banks don’t close their books for the year on the calendar year, they have a fiscal year, but our fiscal year is the calendar year, and there literally is no day of the year that is worse for the process of getting marks for your whole portfolio than December 31, because everyone is gone. You’re looking for a price on an illiquid security and you call up the bank you dealt with, and the salesperson you deal with is not there, his backup’s not there, his backup’s backup is not there, the trader’s backup is not there, you’re literally getting the most junior person on the desk trying to get someone on his cell phone on the ski slope in Vermont—it’s just about the dumbest time to choose to do it. Every year, two weeks in advance, I send a list to all my counterparties, saying, “Here’s the list of things I need pricing for, really, make sure you have somebody available to price these. And ‘skiing’ is not an excuse; ‘I’m with my family on safari, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro’—not an excuse.” And every year the excuses are, “I’m skiing,” or the guy’s on safari, whatever—it’s incredible. So my New Year’s is always wrecked. I’m waiting around for the last guy to give me the last price.