My client Jack was the founder of a mid-range hedge fund. He had majored in math at college, found his calling as a “quant,” and thought he was just having fun.

But when people consult me, it’s because the fun has stopped.

I’d read about Jack’s troubles in The Wall Street Journal, but I asked him, “Tell me in your own words.”

Now in his mid-30s, Jack started with a virtual day-by-day account of his career. The guy was a total geek. “Wait,” I said. “I’m not the SEC; just give me an outline, not every detail.” I realized that outside the realm of numbers, Jack was uncomfortable. This was my first clue as to what might have gone wrong at his fund. Maybe he’d had trouble with his staff, or even with investors. While all these people cared about numbers and the fund’s monthly returns, they still needed a degree of cosseting.

I got the fifty-cent history. In his late 20s, Jack broke away from the pack, started his own fund, and was headed for the stratosphere. Until now, when he has almost crashed and burned. It seemed prescient, in a sad, ironic way, that he had named the fund Comet Investments—a flashy phenomenon that streaks across the sky, then disappears into interstellar space.

As he filled me in, Jack said the firm made consistent gains over seven or eight years. But in early 2020, the pandemic upended everything.

Some investors pulled their capital. A few portfolio managers quit. A week later, Jack was in my office.

“Well,” he said, “You can’t fix my investment strategy, but, short of that, can you help me restore

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