The Generosity Power Move That Can Boost Your Career
To get ahead, learn how to be a connector
By RACHEL FEINTZEIG
Tue, Oct 22, 2024 9:38am
4 min
4 min
Connectors always know just who you should talk to. They send the perfect introductory emails: warm, crisp, direct. And they make it look so effortless.
“It’s almost like music or something,” says David Dewane, a Chicago architect who loves introducing contacts from all parts of his life. “If you do it right, what you get is a little flash of possibility for both people.”
And possibility for the connector, too. Call it karma, the power of networks , or even just luck . If you become that hub for your friends and colleagues, it will come back to you, enriching your circles.
I think of people I know in my own life, the ones I speed text when I need a doctor for my kid. I feel so grateful, like they’re these life buoys that help keep me afloat. I wonder: Can the rest of us do that?
“We all develop a point at which the network that we’re in can’t satisfy our needs anymore,” says Brian Uzzi, a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management who studies social network science.
When we become brokers, dipping in and out of various groups, we have access to all kinds of new information: little tips, fresh opportunities. Synthesizing multiple viewpoints, we’re better able to solve problems in innovative ways, Uzzi says. People love us for it.
Getting ahead
Connectors are more likely to get promoted and win bigger bonuses , Uzzi says. In one study of M.B.A. students, those who acted as brokers between cliques were twice as likely to get the best job offers upon graduating, he adds.
The key is to give before you ask.
“The idea of reciprocity is very powerful,” says Greg Pryor, a longtime human-resources executive who now researches organizational psychology topics.
Need a favor while you’re building a relationship, and you’re automatically in debt, he says. Instead, his career has been guided by a pay-it-forward mentality. He ends most calls by asking, “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
One time, a colleague asked if Pryor could get an acquaintance of hers up to speed on the topic of corporate culture and values. He spent a day with the friend-of-a-friend and connected her to others in the industry he thought could help.
The woman ended up becoming the chief human resources officer at software company Workday. When Pryor was looking for his next job, he reached out to her. A few weeks later, he was the new head of talent at Workday.
He spent a decade there, the best stretch of his career, he says.
The email formula
There’s an art to crafting the perfect email intro. Dewane, the Chicago architect who’s orchestrated thousands of introductions, is constantly scanning his mental Rolodex for pairs of contacts who can solve each other’s problems. He usually gets preapproval to reach out from both parties, then turns to his formula.
There’s two paragraphs—one for each person. He describes what they do, why he thought of them, and how they’re perfect to connect on this particular thing. He includes hyperlinks to both LinkedIn profiles. And he always puts the person who stands to gain more from the interaction last, queuing them up to initiate contact.
“I get kind of paranoid if intros just hang there,” he says.
If there’s a big difference in power between the two people, he choreographs the thread even more intricately. When connecting architecture students with professionals he knows at design studios, he’ll inform the students that he’s sending the email at 8 a.m. They are to reply by 8:04 a.m.
“I am going to open the door and then you are going to walk through it,” he says.
Oftentimes people freeze as they sit down to pen an email, scared of overpromising, says Erica Dhawan, a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based leadership consultant and author of a book about digital communication. Sliding into someone’s inbox involves risk. You’re encroaching on their time and looping yourself to two disparate contacts who may or may not hit it off.
Dhawan recommends using the phrase, “no guilt, no obligation,” when asking people if they’re open to connecting.
“I want them to feel like there’s mutual benefit,” she says, not like they’re doing her a favour.
Worst intro ever
Being on the receiving end of an introduction can also leave your stomach in knots, if it’s not done right.
“I’m in an email thread and I’m like, I don’t know why I’m here,” says Khaled Bashir, the founder of a marketing agency and AI startup in Toronto. “What am I supposed to do?”
Fellow founders will often connect him with potential clients. At least he thinks that’s what they are. The context is sometimes missing, and he’d appreciate a funny icebreaker so he can slide into the conversation without it having to be all business.
Bad intros can have happy endings, though.
Years back, Bashir was thrown into a random WhatsApp group by a client. No explanation, just him and one other guy. It turned out the other person was a fellow agency owner. The pair became fast friends. They bonded over the synergies in their work and a love of Japanese comics. Now, Bashir is selling the marketing part of his business to the friend, a move that will let him focus on growing his AI offerings.
Bon appétit
To make connections less awkward, add food. Michael Magdelinskas, who works in government affairs for a consulting firm, hosts frequent dinner parties at his Manhattan apartment. Over sous-vide pork chops and cognac ice cream, he brings together everyone from former colleagues to acquaintances visiting from overseas.
He crafts guest lists by thinking about common hobbies, hometowns and the ratio of introverts to extroverts. Recently, a group of attendees formed their own Instagram chat thread, bonding over an inside joke. They didn’t even think to include Magdelinskas.
“That’s a good thing,” he says. “That means the process is working.”
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Wall Street’s hottest momentum trade has reversed sharply, as former winners tumble and heavily shorted stocks surge.
By Gregory Zuckerman and Gunjan Banerji
Mon, Aug 31, 2026 3 min
3 min
Wall Street’s hottest trade has gone ice cold.
For years, it paid off to buy stocks that were rising in price—and bet against struggling shares. The momentum trade was especially profitable this year, as investors piled into hot stocks including Micron Technology, Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and other artificial-intelligence darlings while wagering against those likely to be hurt by the embrace of AI.
The S&P 500 Momentum Index soared 44% in the second quarter, its best quarterly performance on record, and it surged 133% over the past five years, nearly double the broad market’s performance.
Mega funds and rookie investors alike piled into the trade, some using leverage and options contracts in an effort to amplify their returns, propelling the underlying shares higher.
“It is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Matthew Tym, managing director at Cantor Fitzgerald, of the trade.
Suddenly, the trade is a loser. The momentum index has tumbled more than 9% since July 1, lagging behind the S&P 500’s 2.8% gain. The index—which tracks stocks in the S&P 500 based on a “momentum score”—is on track for the biggest quarterly underperformance in 25 years. July was the second-worst month for the momentum trade in around 40 years, according to Bank of America estimates; the only month worse was April 2009, in the teeth of the global financial crisis.
Hedge funds that bought momentum shares while shorting low-momentum stocks suffered even more. At the same time, a basket of the most popular stocks held by hedge funds tracked by Goldman Sachs recorded its biggest one-month underperformance in July relative to the S&P 500 in more than 20 years, according to the bank’s analysts.
Momentum trading is based on a rather simple observation: Investments that go up tend to keep outperforming; those that underperform often remain laggards. This kind of trading might seem too simple a stock-picking strategy to work. Yet it often has.
“For decades, it didn’t take a lot of sophistication to run a momentum strategy and make a decent living at it,” says Agustin Lebron, senior researcher at EquiLibre, a trading firm.
Part of the reason: It takes a while for corporate and other information to spread to various investors, so they slowly build positions, producing buying momentum.
“A huge pension fund can’t flip around its positions in a day,” says Lebron. “Behavioral biases also account for some of the effect, as well—people tend to sell their winners too early and hold losers too long.”
Fans of the strategy point to the human tendency to extrapolate from past results—and chase investment returns—noting that momentum patterns have been evident in markets for decades, even centuries. They also say that some of the worst months for momentum strategies are during longer periods of outperformance.
Some have been doing the trade by buying the strongest investments in a sector while shorting the weakest; others lean in to rising markets or asset classes. Still others use a quantitative approach or turn to banks or others who sell ways to make distinct wagers on momentum as a “tradable factor” or a “thematic basket.”
The fans remain believers. “Any strategy has disappointing periods,” says Antti Ilmanen, global co-head of the portfolio solutions group at AQR Capital Management.
The surge in Moderna and other biotech stocks helped crush the momentum trade. These shares were among the most heavily shorted in recent years, but positive news on a cancer vaccine from Moderna and Merck sent those stocks flying, crushing some quant and other hedge funds. Moderna is up around 150% so far this month.
These traders had an especially rough day on Aug. 19, which Goldman Sachs told its clients was the worst day for “systematic long-short managers” in more than two years. About half of the losses were because of momentum trades, the bank said.
Some traders have begun to short, or bet against, the very stocks that propelled the momentum trade earlier this year. Net short positions in futures tied to the Nasdaq-100 index among speculators recently climbed to some of the highest levels of the past two decades, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The about-face is a sign of how markets have become more treacherous for investors, even as indexes keep climbing. Part of the issue: the recent meltdown of Situational Awareness, a hedge fund that had piled into some of the most popular momentum shares, including chip stocks. After a period of market tumult, Nvidia shares rocketed almost 9% after its earnings, showing how quickly sentiment can shift.
Some investors say the run-up in share prices driving tech stocks higher reminds them at times of the dot-com frenzy decades ago.
Mike Ogborne, the founder of San Francisco-based Ogborne Capital Management, said he has grown more cautious on technology stocks and is keeping more of his portfolio in cash than he typically does.
And he is nervous about the surge in spending by technology giants and quarterly capital expenditures that keep rising.
“It is a little bit like Cinderella and the clock striking midnight. You don’t know when midnight is going to come around,” Ogborne said. “They don’t send a memo around telling you when the capex cycle is over.”
