When Grace enters a room, she captures everyone's attention. Tall and slender, Grace has long, ebony hair and sea green eyes on an oval, ageless face. By all accounts she's pretty, if not stunning.

There are numerous reasons why Grace Wu is considered amazing. Beauty aside, she's a math prodigy, an accomplished violinist, a third-degree black belt in Dim-Mak, and piercingly, frighteningly smart-with an IQ well north of 200. Those things notwithstanding, it was the performance of the US$2 billion hedge fund she singularly owns and manages that led her to be dubbed Amazing Grace. In the six years of the fund's existence, it has never delivered less then 15% annually.


NONE OF THIS WOULD BE CONSIDERED EXTRAORDINARY IF IT WEREN'T FOR THE FACT THAT GRACE RUNS HER HEDGE FUND FROM A CONVERTED 757 COMPLETE WITH ITS OWN "TRADING FLOOR" AND EROTIC PLAYGROUND.

Grace's fund focuses principally on currency transactions. While she employs a team of four traders, she directs the overall strategy and personally conducts most of the trading. All profits are siphoned off at regular intervals so the hedge fund never exceeds its US$2 billion ceiling. Grace doesn't charge a management fee and receives 10% of the profits-a fire sale compared with the expense structures of many hedge funds. The hedge fund has only five investors-all single or multifamily offices-and her founding investor accounts for half the fund's capital. None of this would be considered extraordinary if it weren't for the fact that Grace runs her hedge fund from a converted 757 complete with its own "trading floor" and erotic playground.

The unconventional office coupled with a nearly ceaseless travel schedule help Grace maintain her tax status as a "perpetual tourist," circumstances that have helped her become exceptionally wealthy in just a half dozen years. Grace will readily admit to enjoying her wealth, religiously donating millions to her favorite charities and spending many millions more on jewels, fine art, a jet, mansions throughout the world, couture and custom-made clothing, a small private island-and a select few men of note.

Grace attributes much of her financial success to her mastery of the Art of Memory. Through it she has constructed a Memory Palace that, according to her, includes every meaningful geopolitical and financial interaction that impacts the five currencies she trades.

A Memory Palace is a mnemonic technique originating with the ancient Greeks, commonly used by the leading alchemists of the Middle Ages and quite popular among Gnostics. It takes the form of a building replete with rooms, passages (even secret passages), niches, alcoves and the associated architectural details. The idea is to "walk" through the Memory Palace and connect with desired information on an as needed basis. The images in a Memory Palace are intentionally emotional so they are easily remembered. In Grace's case, sexually surrealistic images populate her Memory Palace.

Grace professes that her Memory Palace is more then a database of events, facts and figures. For her, it's a continuously operating cognitive computer running "what-if" simulations. Based on the results of these simulations, Grace takes currency positions with-to date-amazing results.