NYT: Steve Cohen’s Amazin’, Maddening, Money-Losing Bid to Own New York

Those who know him say his view of subordinates can be similarly binary — morons and moneymakers, doers and duds — producing sometimes savage encounters in the workplace. Business associates have been routinely berated in front of peers, their intelligence insulted in a hail of expletives. “That’s your best idea?” he has asked his traders, peppering profanities. “Are you stupid?”

At minimum, Cohen’s overlapping roles now can produce some surface tensions in his days. He is an inveterate ticker-reader who could not stop gushing about the preseason “vibe,” an obsessive trader who recently started working from Citi Field on Thursdays so he could join team meetings a few hours after the market opens.

He is a famed bottom-line watcher outwardly unbothered by the hundreds of millions of dollars he stands to lose this season on the team, to which several executives from his hedge fund, Point72, now dedicate part of their time.

“He does a great job,” said Buck Showalter, the seen-it-all Mets manager, “of eliminating excuses.”

Even Cohen’s speaking manner betrays a certain wear-you-down relentlessness. He often begins sentences with “listen” and ends them with “right?” — a tic that conveys his wishes clearly: Hear him out and kindly agree with him.