CR 007: Pete Muller on the Importance of Embracing Dualities

The singer-songwriter discusses achieving success in both finance and the arts, his passion for music, and his latest album, “More Time.”

Pete Muller, photo by Alysse Grafkjen

Pete Muller might be the only Forbes-profiled hedge fund manager to have busked in the New York City subway. After earning a mathematics degree from Princeton, Muller founded the asset management company PDT Partners in 1993. Over the past three decades, the company has become enormously profitable, leading Forbes to include Muller in its list of the Highest-Earning Hedge Fund Managers of 2019. Still, Muller, a self-described “word nerd,” isn’t content to stay in one lane. Even as he worked to transform Wall Street, he has simultaneously pursued a career in music—performing in train stations and coffee shops, writing songs, opening for artists such as Joan Osborne and John Oates, and releasing critically acclaimed albums. In addition, he also pens a monthly music-themed crossword puzzle for the Washington Post and engages in music philanthropy. (In 2017 he partnered with the Berklee School of Music and the City of New York to revitalize the legendary Power Station recording studio.)

This innovative approach—working concurrently in two seemingly contradictory fields, finance and the arts—is apt for Muller, who doesn’t like mutual exclusivity. “I’ve always been a person,” he says, “that, when given a choice, I want to do both. ‘Do you want to ski or snowboard?’ I want to do both. I’ve always been kind of an ‘and’ person. I want to do it all.”

This “and, not or” point of view is a running theme in Muller’s sixth solo album, More Time. Recorded in Memphis, it features an array of impressive talent, including Lisa Loeb, who joins Muller on the blues-drenched single “Run Out of Love.” I recently caught up with Muller over Zoom to discuss the album, his exceptional career, and why he defies labels.

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SANDRA EBEJER: You have found success in both the arts and the financial sector. Those two fields rarely, if ever, intersect. But you’ve stated on your website that you don’t see yourself as being a hedge fund manager or a musician, you see yourself as being one and the other. Can you talk a bit about that?

PETE MULLER: I think to do anything innovative in business and finance and technology, there’s a huge amount of creativity involved. You know, coming from a deep place, assimilating everything that you’ve seen, and going, “Wait, let’s do this thing that hasn’t been done before.” That’s very similar to the process that you go through in writing a song and performing it and trying to pull things out and make something new. So I think the biggest part is creativity; that’s one aspect that really overlaps.

The second is being able to feel your own emotions and give voice to them, and to feel other people’s emotions. It’s obvious why that’s important in creating music and performing, but I find it incredibly important in business, as well. Because if you understand where people are coming from and you can build trust with them, you can help them grow in ways that would otherwise be impossible. And if you create that environment where collaboration works really well, people trust each other, and they feel heard and understood, amazing things are possible. So both of those things are [important]. Understanding melody, harmony, and lyrics really has nothing to do with quantitative mathematical models and finance, but the other parts are important for both. That’s where the intersection happens.

Are you still actively involved in the financial side of things while you’re touring and promoting this album?