‘Not being the worst stands in some rank of praise,” observes an increasingly befuddled King Lear in the second act of Shakespeare’s play of the same name. As his thankless daughters Regan and Goneril vie to see who can out-downsize dad with draconian cuts to his traveling entourage, the lame-duck king takes a bean-counting approach. Goneril offers 50 servants, Regan 25. He’ll go with Goneril. Lear’s simplistic yet irrefutable math has played out in a peculiar parallel in the hedge-fund world over recent weeks.