Hedgehogging E-Book

Barton Biggs

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 587

Beschreibung

Rare is the opportunity to chat with a legendary financial figure and hear the unvarnished truth about what really goes on behind the scenes. Hedgehogging represents just such an opportunity, allowing you to step inside the world of Wall Street with Barton Biggs as he discusses investing in general, hedge funds in particular, and how he has learned to find and profit from the best moneymaking opportunities in an eat-what-you-kill, cutthroat investment world.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE - The Triangle Investment Club Dinner

KIBITZING, GILDING, AND SANDBAGGING

JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE A SNAKE DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT A MONEYMAKER

IT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE, AND THE HEDGEHOGS ARE KILLING THEIR GOLDEN GOOSE

CHAPTER TWO - The New Hedgehogs May Have Been Golden Boys, but They Still ...

THREE GUYS FROM GOLDMAN SACHS

SUPERSTAR IAN SLEEPS WITH HIS PORTFOLIO—AND GRINDS HIS TEETH

GRINNING GILBERT LOSES HIS GRIN

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HOT, YOUNG TECH GUY

CHAPTER THREE - Short- Selling Oil

TORTURED BY SHORTING OIL

DEEP ANALYSIS CAN GET YOU IN DEEP TROUBLE

YEARS OF LOVE GO DOWN THE DRAIN

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE EARLY 1900s: THE MARKET HASN’T CHANGED THAT MUCH

CHAPTER FOUR - Short Selling Is Not for Sissies

THE PRINCE OF BLACKNESS

THE CARIBBEAN CASINO SAGA

FRANTIC CLIENTS AND HOSTILE BROKERS

THE AGONY GOES ON AND ON

CHAPTER FIVE - The Odyssey of Starting a Hedge Fund

BIG-TIME MONEY RAISING AT THE BREAKERS

JIM THE TRIGGER: INVEST FIRST AND ASK QUESTIONS LATER

THE FUND OF FUNDS IS A TOUGH CUSTOMER

SEARCHING FOR THE NEW MESSIAH

HEADACHES, INSOMNIA, AND GLOOM

CHAPTER SIX - The Roadshow Grind

PETER THE GREAT: AN INVESTMENT NYMPHOMANIAC

NONSTOP PRESENTATIONS: FROM STIMULATING TO LISTLESS TO SKEPTICAL TO HOSTILE

FINALLY, WE GET A BREAK: DINNER WITH A TRULY GREAT INVESTOR

SIZE IS THE ENEMY OF PERFORMANCE

TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE

MEETING MARGARET THATCHER

GLOOM AND DEPRESSION BACK HOME

CHAPTER SEVEN - The Run-Up and Haunted by Remembrances and Doubt

A.W. JONES WAS THE PIONEER

NOTHING LIKE A PUNCH IN THE MOUTH THE FIRST DAY

THE GREAT BEAR MARKET—AND THE BOTTOMLESS PIT IN MY STOMACH

CHAPTER EIGHT - Hedgehogs Come in All Sizes and Shapes

IT TAKES COURAGE TO BE A PIG AND TOTIS PORCIS

THE BEARDED PROPHET OF THE APOCALYPSE

FINDING MEANING IN ALL THE NOISE AND BABBLE

WHAT MAKES A SUPERSTAR INVESTOR?

CHAPTER NINE - The Violence of Secular Market Cycles

PUBLIC MONEY FLOODS IN AND FLOWS OUT AT EXACTLY THE WRONG TIMES

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SECULAR AND CYCLICAL BEAR MARKETS

BULL MARKETS AND BUBBLES IN JAPAN VERSUS THE UNITED STATES

THE SECULAR BEAR MARKET OF 1969-1974

CHAPTER TEN - The Battle for Investment Survival

GREAT EXPECTATIONS FOR EUROPEAN PRIVATE EQUITY (BUT THAT’S NOT THE WAY THE ...

TRACKING U.S. PRIVATE EQUITY AND WONDERING

THE CROWD IS ALWAYS WRONG DURING MARKET EXTREMES

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW FACTOR—AND OTHER CONTRARIAN INDICATORS

CHAPTER ELEVEN - From One Generation to Another

TIMBERLAND FOR CHILDREN WITH INHERITED MONEY

YALE’S ENDOWMENT: FROM BANKRUPT TO NEGLECTED TO THE BEST

CHAPTER TWELVE - Nature’s Mysticism and Groupthink Stinks

FIBONACCI NUMBERS ARE POWERFUL—BUT TOO MYSTERIOUS FOR ANALYZING MARKETS

ADAM SMITH HAD IT FIGURED OUT

BUT SOLOTHINK IS DANGEROUS, TOO

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A COLLECTIVE BRAIN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - The Internet Bubble

JIM GLASSMAN’S DOW 36,000: INFLAMMATORY FOOLISHNESS

THE CROWD HOOTED

THE NEXT BULL MARKET: AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Great Investment Managers Are Intense, Disciplined Maniacs

DON’T HOLD ON BLINDLY: GREAT INVESTORS CUT THEIR LOSSES

VISILES AND AUDILES AND DISCIPLINED READING

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - You’re Only as Beloved as Your Most Recent Performance

THE TRAUMA OF RUNNING MONEY IS NOT FOR EVERYONE OR TRAUMA WHEN YOU BITE THE DUST

EVEN SUPERSTARS GET PUSHED OUT

EVEN CONSERVATIVE CYNICS LOSE CLIENTS

EVEN GREAT INVESTORS HAVE COLD SPELLS

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Once You Have a Fortune, How Can You Hang On to It?

IN AN APOCALYPSE, JEWELRY WORKS

THINK OF RETURNS NET AFTER FEES AND TAXES

VENTURE CAPITAL IS GLAMOROUS BUT RISKY . . . BUT YOU CAN GET A WONDERFUL RIDE

SELECT HEDGE FUNDS WITH SKEPTICAL CARE

DON’T GO HEDGEHOGGING BY YOURSELF: FUNDS OF FUNDS MAKE SENSE

INVESTING IN FINE ART: LOVE IT FOR ITSELF, NOT AS AN INVESTMENT

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Three Investment Religions

IDENTIFYING GROWTH STOCKS IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT

VALUE INVESTORS LOVE UGLY COMPANIES

AGNOSTICS BELIEVE THIS, TOO, SHALL PASS

GROWTH OR VALUE: WHICH PERFORMS BETTER?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - The Trouble with Being Big

BLOATING AND BUREAUCRACY

GREAT MAVERICKS WILL ALWAYS GO THEIR OWN WAY

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE—BUT IT’S SO TOUGH TO PRACTICE

ALPHA INVESTING IS A ZERO-SUM GAME

CHAPTER NINETEEN - Bubbles and the True Believer

TWO TYPES OF BUBBLES: BAD AND VERY BAD

THE PROVERBIAL LONG WAVE IN THE ECONOMY

THE TRUE BELIEVER: DISCIPLE OF GOLD

CHAPTER TWENTY - Divine Intervention, or Inside Information?

THE MYSTERY OF JUD’S WALL STREET JOURNAL

A COLD SHIVER RUNS UP JUD’S CREAKING SPINE

“YOU’VE GOT THE HOT HAND, KID”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - John Maynard Keynes

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ECONOMIST OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

INTELLECTUALLY BRILLIANT EVEN IN HIS YOUTH

BECOMING A POLITICAL THINKER

KEYNES AND HIS HEDGE FUND

THE NEED FOR A CONVENTIONAL LIFE: TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AS AN ECONOMIST

KEYNES’ INVESTMENTS DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION

THE GREAT GAME AND THE GAMBLING INSTINCT

SUFFERING (PERSONALLY AND FINANCIALLY) DURING THE LATE 1930s AND WWII

CONCLUSION

RECOMMENDED READING

Copyright © 2006 by Barton Biggs. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Biggs, Barton, 1932-

Hedgehogging / Barton Biggs.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-471-77191-3 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-470-06773-4 (pbk.)

1. Hedge funds. I. Title.

HG4530.B516 2006

332.64’5—dc22

2005026139

INTRODUCTION

In the three years since I wrote Hedgehogging, a lot has happened to the hedge fund world, but the people and the engulfing emotions of fear and greed that torture and compel manic behavior from the players that I write about in this book are still the same. The capital invested in equity-oriented hedge funds around the world is around a trillion dollars (up from $300 billion six years ago), with the gross exposure both long and short somewhere between $1.5 and $2 trillion. Overall performance after fees (not surprisingly, considering the strong markets since 2002) has been mediocre.

Both the birth and death rates continue to be astronomical. No one knows the exact numbers, but at least 2,000 hedge funds have closed since the end of 2004, and probably 2,500 new funds have opened.There have been triumphs and tragedies, and a few fortunate men (as far as I know there are no very rich women hedge funders) have become filthy rich, and many other unfortunates have been broken, sometimes brutally, on the rack of performance and marketing neglect.

Since I wrote the book, funds of hedge funds have become an even more important factor in the business. In the past decade, funds of funds have been the biggest winners in the entire investment management business, with their assets up 10 times from 1999, and with growth in the past three years in excess of 25% annually. It is estimated that there are now 2,500 of them, up from 500 seven years ago. Funds of funds now account for almost 40% of total hedge fund assets, which is far ahead of the 22% share of high net worth individuals. The five biggest funds of funds control about a third of the business, and they can flick $150 million in or out of a hedge fund at a moment’s notice. Love sessions such as the Breakers Conference I describe have multiplied.

What have been some other trends? First, hedge funds have become more recognized as a noncorrelated asset class for pension fund, foundation, and endowment money. An increasing number of fiduciaries and plan sponsors believe hedge funds in bull markets should deliver at least 80% of the return of the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, and in bear markets will not lose money and perhaps will make a little. Thus, they have become a preferred diversifier and the substitute for fixed income in large multi-asset portfolios.

Second, the number of and publicity about fund accidents have frightened many buyers. The volatility and huge losses of the previously sacrosanct quant funds rattled them, and the collapse of some very big funds—in particular, Amaranth, Bear Stearns, and Sowood—has put the fear of God into investment committees, trustees, hedge fund consultants, and fiduciaries. As a result, the new institutional money is increasingly going to the giant, established so-called multistrategy hedge fund groups. In other words, the big are getting even bigger.

At the same time, fiduciaries are looking for protection. They don’t want the grief and resulting lawsuits if one of the funds they selected blows up. This makes funds of hedge funds more attractive, as they provide a layer of fiduciary protection.

The good thing about funds of funds is that they are managed by expert professionals who spend their time studying hedge funds. They do extensive analysis of the sources of hedge fund performance and how much risk individual hedge funds are taking. They monitor portfolios and are not susceptible to promotional bullsh**.

In addition, as I discuss in my book, they pay close attention to the sociological signs of hubris evolution. Subtle indications that a manager might be taking his eye off the ball are a falling golf handicap, a divorce, the purchase of multiple vacation homes, multiple foreign nannies, and a rising social and charity profile. In other words, the funds of funds are professional.

The bad thing about funds of funds is that they abhor performance volatility and so-called drawdowns. A drawdown is when a fund reports a decline in net asset value for a marking period. An occasional monthly drawdown will be tolerated, but a large quarterly drawdown can be the trigger for a quick redemption. The funds of funds also tend to chase performance. The results of these practices are that hedge fund managers become terribly conscious of not losing money, and at the first sign of a soft market head for the sidelines and often get whipsawed. In other words, they become trend followers. In my view, you are not going to produce an exceptional long-term record if you let business considerations dominate good investment decision making.

The Achilles’ heel of funds of funds may be their fee structure. Often they charge a 1 percent fixed fee and 10% of the profits. Combine that with hedge funds that are assessing 2% and 20%, and the investor has some hefty hurdle to work through. Large amounts of money under management and high fees spell eventual performance disappointment. I will bet hedge fund fees will be considerably lower five years from now.

The third trend involves the disasters of the big quant funds in August of 2007. For a long time computer-driven, black-box investing had seemed to be in a relentless ascendancy. Strange, reclusive, bearded physics doctorates who effortlessly could do complex data mining using powerful computers were the new, new thing. Experienced investors with judgment, intuitions, and complex reactions to the economy were dinosaurs. It all seemed so simple. Back-test, massage the data, discover patterns, and then identify and buy cheap stocks based on fundamental valuation criteria and be short expensive stocks. Throw in a little momentum analysis for timing and some leverage for performance, and the portfolio was bound to be a moon shot regardless of what the overall market was doing.

Then came the summer of 2007. Volatility increased, and suddenly the quant funds had more leverage than their risk budgets permitted. As a result, they began to reduce their holdings by selling their long positions and covering (buying back) their shorts. The trouble was that their models all had generally produced similar stocks so they were long and short the same names. Compounding the problem was the bias of these giants to small- and medium-capitalization stocks. This process created a marvelous virtuous circle when the quants were getting floods of new money but a vicious circle when they had to shrink their portfolios. They had to sell the stocks they owned and buy back the shares they were short, so consequently their longs were going down while their shorts were soaring.

The result was a devastating meltdown in July and August of 2007. The big, famous quant funds suddenly had disastrous falls in value. As frightened investors withdrew capital, the vicious circle became even more vicious. Declines of 20% to 30% in a month were common, which generated frantic redemption notices from their investors.

There were all kinds of secondary consequences. A Midwestern quant whose nickname was Super Cruncher and who was famous for wearing T-shirts to the office suddenly came down with Bell’s palsy. This is an affliction where you get crushing headaches, your eyes water, your tongue thickens, and one side of your face is paralyzed—hardly the impression you want to create when you meet with clients during a time of very rough performance. A rumor spread that he had experienced a stroke, and redemptions soared.

Another well-known quant, a relatively young man who liked to call himself “an evidence-based investor” and who luxuriated in an immense, sprawling house in the new hedge fund capital of the world, Greenwich, Connecticut, took the whole debacle very seriously and became depressed as his theories and performance unraveled—so seriously, in fact, that it affected his sexual potency. His wife began to suspect that he must have a girlfriend. Angered by his neglect, she fled with the children in his G-5 to her family’s home in San Diego. His depression deepened. Who knows what the outcome will be?

The moral of the quant meltdown story is that quant value investing works as long as too many people don’t do it. To paraphrase one of my favorite quotations: “Ignore the investment past and you will lose an eye; invest based on the past and you will lose both of them.” The stock market is a sadistic, contrary, changeable beast and nothing is forever.

The other big trend is the high failure rate of new funds. It has become increasingly difficult to raise money. A friend of mine—let’s call him Dan—left J.P. Morgan Investment Management in 2005 with a great record in small- and mid-cap stocks. He got $15 million from the hedge fund incubator Julian Robertson and a few million more from some friends and family. Since inception his performance has been spectacular, and his prime broker last summer offered to take him on tour to raise money. In June, July, and August he made over 100 presentations. The results to date? Zippo. As Dan puts it: “They got me a lot of dates and about half the girls kissed me good night, but not one asked me to come in and spend the night!”

This is why so many new funds go out of business after a couple of years. They just can’t get to an asset size to cover their overhead and make ends meet at home. Five years ago, just starting a hedge fund got you attention. Now there are so many funds out there that unless you shoot the lights out, no one pays any attention. And, make no mistake, once an investment guy does his own hedge fund things and drops out of business, it’s not so easy to land the next job.

So in the hedge fund world “it’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die as time goes by.” Buy sheep, sell deer.

CHAPTER ONE

The Triangle Investment Club Dinner

Hacking Through the Hedgehog Jungle

I went to the Triangle Investment Club dinner at the Century last night. There were about 25 guys there, about half from hedge funds and the other half very aggressive long-only managers. The age mix was about half and half, too. There were plenty of distinguished oldies with curly gray hair and husky voices who roll their words, but also a lot of sleek-looking young guys who talk very fast.Young or ancient, everyone there was a big-time investor running public, competitive money of one type or other.

Triangle is an investment club of mostly guys who have dinner once a month to exchange ideas and take one another’s temperatures. I don’t go that often.You must be in the mood.You have to be capable of putting (and keeping) your game face on because, although everyone is ostensibly friendly and jovial, the members are some of the most intensely competitive people in the United States. There is definitely an edge to the interaction and conversation. It’s not exactly a relaxing, friendly evening with old tried-and-true comrades in arms.

It was the usual routine. We stood around with drinks for half an hour or so and gossiped mainly about how tough it was to make money. I chatted with Jonathan, a big-time hedge fund mogul who must be worth a billion dollars and flies everywhere in his own Gulf Stream. I’ve known him since he was a young analyst at Tiger, Julian Robertson’s legendary hedge fund. I like him. He is one of those guys who tells you exactly what’s on his mind.

Tonight he is shaking his head. A week from now is his oldest daughter’s tenth birthday, so last night he asked her what she would really like for her big double-digit birthday. She looks at him and says, “I can ask for anything?” He says, “Yes.” She says, “You won’t get mad? My wish involves an airplane.” He’s stunned. What has he wrought? Poor little rich girl! She wants her own plane. With trepidation he says, “Okay. What is it?” “Daddy,” she says, “I’m almost 10 years old, and I’ve never been on a commercial airline flight. All the other girls at school have. What I really want is for you to take me to a real airport, check in, go through security, get searched, stand in line, and fly commercial to someplace. Daddy, never having done it is really embarrassing.” Hedgehogging with children is not easy!

KIBITZING, GILDING, AND SANDBAGGING

Then we go in to dinner at a long table with candles and fresh flowers, and immediately Leon, who had the chair last night, gets things going and we begin to go around the table. In no more than four minutes, each guy is supposed to elucidate his favorite stock or concept and the reasons why. Everyone takes notes, and there is a lot of kibitzing. Because there are many mammoth egos present, the chair has to be ruthless about cutting speakers off or we would be there all night. There are some guys who say they get a lot of ideas out of the dinner. I don’t find that I do, but you do come away from the evening with a sense of what the mood of the members is and what the hot areas are.

Last night I got a sense of confusion. The mix between longs and shorts was pretty balanced. Some of the stories boggle the imagination, with lots of aggressive supposition.With energy hot, one young guy told a fantastic tale about a Malaysian wildcat oil company that had a structure at offshore Borneo, which rivaled the North Sea. Sure! A mutual fund manager told of a new surgical process that cuts the risk of impotence from prostate surgery by 75%. Then there are the usual market-cap-to-eyeballs stories about new and old Internet adventures, and wondrous tales about everything from health-food chains to nanotechnology.

It is assumed you’re going to be recommending what you already have a position in. Most guys announce their positions before talking. As always, there was a lot of cynical, sardonic byplay, with certain notorious offenders being accused of gilding (as in gilding the lily) and an occasional joking cry of “Sandbagger.” Gilding is just what it sounds like—when you dress up your story to take it to the party by exaggerating the fundamentals in your favor. In other words, if you are plugging Symantec and making the case that it’s cheap because it’s going to have big earnings next year, you might, in the spell of the evening, jack up your earnings estimate from $3.50 a share to $3.75, when even $3.30 would be a minor miracle. But who can forecast earnings of an exotic tech company anyway, and why not dream a little?

Gilding is a relatively minor offense because, to some extent, everybody does it all the time. The members have very sensitive built-in BS detectors, so egregious gilding backfires and tarnishes the credibility of the gilder. Also, members who know the story being presented have no compunction about rudely interrupting and correcting the gilder. This can be quite embarrassing, but it’s all part of the charm of the evening. If a guy tells a good, original story and nobody interrupts, it means that the tale is at least fresh and maybe for real.

Sandbagging is a much more serious crime.You can even get kicked out of the club if you’re caught red-handed, en flagrante so to speak. Sandbagging is when you tell a story and egregiously gild it, hoping to attract buyers at the same time you are actually secretly selling the stock. It’s one thing to promote the story of what you own or are short, and as noted, most members make it clear that they have a position one way or the other in the merchandise they are talking about. It’s quite another to sandbag. Sandbagging is dishonest, cheating, a violation of the rules of the money game.

JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE A SNAKE DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT A MONEYMAKER

One guy who used to be a member, Richard, was always suspected of being a sandbagger, but it’s a capital offense and very hard to prove, and as long as nobody got hurt, it was overlooked. Richard, incidentally, is one of those guys who insists on being called Richard and not Dick.

Now there are some slick, slimy guys in the big-time hedge fund business who traffic in stories and even in forms of inside information. Richard is as slick and slimy as they come, although he has a smooth, cultured, Harvard veneer, wears fancy suits, and talks with a hint of a Boston accent. But just because you’re a snake doesn’t mean that you are not a moneymaker. Richard has been around for a long time, and one of the other members was even in business with him for a while. That ended in a nasty lawsuit. Richard once arrogantly described himself as a self-made man, and his former partner interjected, “and you worship your creator.” Richard is very smart, very obnoxious, and has made a lot of money, mostly for himself. He tells a stock story with great certainty and precision, and so I guess that’s why we all put up with him for so long.

Years ago, Richard and I played singles tennis four or five times. It was a horrendous, mind-twisting experience, even though I knew I was better than Richard. If a shot I hit was in but close to the line, he would often, but not always, call it out. If he hit a ball that was clearly out but only by a couple of inches, he would walk up toward the net and stare at the spot. To a certain extent, it was intimidating, and you found yourself hesitating on out calls if they were close. When I got a run of points going, Richard would insist on sitting down and retying his shoes for five minutes. Sometimes, he would miscall the score, always in his favor.

I talked to other guys about it, and they had the same problem. One guy told me that Richard once wanted to start a set over when his opponent was ahead three-love. The problem with confronting Richard was, were you going to make a huge scene and accuse him of cheating? No, it would be too ugly, with people on adjacent courts listening in and thinking that you are both total jerks. So you end up playing carefully and not hitting balls close to the lines. Each time I played him, I resolved it would be the last, but he would press me to play again. As I said, I definitely knew I should beat Richard, but the cheating and the byplay were so unnerving, and my mind was so bent that the fourth time we played, he won, which further enraged me, especially since he immediately told the other guys about it as if it were the usual thing.

Richard finally went a shenanigan too far with the Triangle group. One night a couple of years ago, he told an intriguing story about a company that had secretly developed a weight-loss drug with no side effects that really worked. He rattled off the names of compounds nobody had ever heard of. You took a pill twice a day, and presto, in a month you had lost 10 pounds! Obviously, such a drug would be an absolute blockbuster with obese Americans! He told us he had seen the results of the blind tests, and he cited data from the Stanford Research Group and the AMA. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval was imminent. A number of the guys knew of the company, which was a legitimate biotech with some real scientists but a flabby balance sheet. It had announced it was working on a weight-loss drug that was promising, but the biotech analysts, of course, were skeptical.

Guys were intrigued by the story. When they work, biotech stocks can be moon shots. Richard was asked a lot of tough questions, and he handled them well. I told you he was a smart, savvy guy. “Look,” he said, “the former chairman of Pfizer is a director of Stanford, and I’ve known him for years. We all know nothing is a sure thing in genome land, but he tells me extensive tests show the pill works wonderfully with rats, and best of all, they haven’t found any side effects to speak of. The rats pee a lot more than normal, but their dispositions don’t change. Do what you want. I’ve got a big position, and I’m adding to it.”

The next day, some of the guys put in buy orders and were a little surprised when they got filled quickly and in size. Surprise wasn’t their emotion two weeks later, when the company suddenly announced one morning it was withdrawing the FDA application. Apparently, the drug did cause rats to lose weight, but it also gave them inoperable, incurable stomach cancer, resulting in death. The stock price instantly collapsed. I was at the next meeting, which Richard did not attend. At dinner, one of the guys, John, told how he had been suspicious when his order got filled in a flash, so he had checked who the big seller was. It was the broker Richard always used!

The members looked at each other the way I suppose the apocryphal Western posse looked at each other when they finally figured out who was the cattle thief. John is a large, serious man with big hands, and during cocktails at the following month’s dinner, he and a couple of other guys confronted Richard. Richard squirmed and said he had sold only a little stock to lighten his position. “Get out of here, you piece of crap,” said John quietly, and Richard did. He doesn’t come to the dinners anymore, and I heard he had moved to Los Angeles.

IT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE, AND THE HEDGEHOGS ARE KILLING THEIR GOLDEN GOOSE

Anyway, after dinner last night, some of us sat around and gossiped about hedge funds. The members of the Triangle, opinionated veterans of the investment wars, are not shy about expressing their opinions, and we all have known each other for years. The insults flew like shrapnel on a bad day in Baghdad. It began when someone remarked that there are now 8,000 hedge funds in the United States, and that hedge fund capital has exploded from $36 billion as recently as 1990 to probably around a trillion dollars today. A long-only manager sourly said something along the lines of the following: “The golden age for hedge funds is about over, and it will end with a bang, not a whimper. The larger capital and the bigger talent pool now being deployed by hedge funds mean that the pricing of everything from asset classes to individual securities is under intense scrutiny by manic investors, who stare at screens all day, have massive databases, and swing large amounts of money with lightning speed. This has the effect of bidding up the prices and reducing the returns of all mispriced investments. Obvious anomalies now disappear, almost instantly. In effect, the alpha available for capture by hedge funds has to be spread over more funds with bigger money, resulting in lower returns on invested capital for hedge funds as an asset class. Risks will also rise as hedge funds have to take larger, more concentrated positions. You greedy hogs are in the process of killing your own golden goose. It’s not only endangered, it is about to die. ”

“Don’t you wish,” one of the hedge-fund guys replied from the bottom of his brandy glass. “The golden goose was plumper and sturdier than you think.”

“Global macro is headed for a bust,” another guy said, looking at me. “Too much rookie money. You had better make it quick.” I just stared at him.

“It’s a jungle out there in macro now,” he went on. “There are so many macro players and momentum investors, they’re bumping into each other. There must be a couple of hundred new macro hedge funds formed in the last six months by guys who think they are the next Stan Druckenmiller or Lewis Bacon. Some of these guys are so green, they can confuse you with their stupidity, and they are big and clumsy, so they can hurt you if you bump into them. And then, stumbling around are the proprietary trading desks of all the big investment banks, plus various rogue central banks like Bank Negara and the Nigerians. Last week, I got crunched between an Asian central bank and some rookie hedge fund guy who panicked on his first macro trip. It’s all very disorienting!” The guy, despite his alleged bruises, looked tanned and rested, so I ignored him.

“It’s like the money game; our nice old game is being played at faster and faster speeds by bigger and rougher guys, so it’s getting tougher and more dangerous all the time,” another hedge-fund guy said glumly. “Everybody is on steroids. The violence level is soaring. It’s like the NFL.”

“As more and more funds are unable to earn sufficient excess returns to justify their fees,” another guy said, “the love affair with hedge funds is bound to cool. But not before all that excess capital takes its toll on the performance record and exalted reputations of the big stars. The alpha pool of the whole hedge fund industry is not growing, but the number of guys trying to drink from it is. Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

“I’m not so sure the alpha pool isn’t growing,” I argued. “As all these new, naive, trigger-happy crazies, long on aspiration and short on experience, enter the business, a lot of them will get creamed. Then their losses will expand the alpha pool for the rest of us.” I noticed one of the veterans was looking at me kind of funny, as though he was thinking, “Who are you, punk, to go talking about naive talent?”

“Leverage, leverage, leverage—that’s what is going to wreck you guys eventually,” said the long-only guy. “Actually, since LTCM with its huge balance sheet and various forms of tail optionality (whatever that means) blew up, hedge funds have been reducing leverage. Instead of them, it’s their investors, both individuals and the fund of funds, who are putting on the leverage. The clients of the fund of funds are unhappy with the meager returns they are getting, so the fund of funds goes to the bank and borrows. And the banks, particularly the European ones, are falling all over themselves to offer credit to their wealthy individual clients to leverage up their hedge-fund holdings. Theoretically, it makes sense. A basket of diversified hedge funds has lower volatility than one fund, so why not leverage it up to magnify the returns?”

“Yeah,” said somebody else. “It makes sense until a bolt from the blue, a tsunami wave, a two- or even three-standard-deviation event happens, and then the you-know-what hits the fan. The hedge fund basket has a 10% drawdown not in a year but in a month, and a big leveraged fund of funds could be down 15% in a flash. What happens to the whole hedge-fund universe then? I’ll tell you what. The frightened fund of funds clients redeem, the fund of funds in return have to redeem from their hedge funds, and the whole asset class does an extreme shrink. Furthermore, there are no safe havens. The long-short market-neutral funds get killed, too, because when they have forced liquidations, their longs go down and their shorts go up.”

“Meltdown,” said the long-only guy, “not just for you perps but for everyone else and me too.” The evening was over.

CHAPTER TWO

The New Hedgehogs May Have Been Golden Boys, but They Still Bleed Red

As I mentioned before, for every hedge fund rags-to-riches story, there are at least two to three rags-to-rags or rags-to-riches-to-rags tales. In 2004, an estimated 1,000 funds went out of business. Despite media sensationalism, there are very few spectacular blowups, in which a fund goes down in flames like LTCM or Bayou, but there are a lot of slow, lingering deaths. A couple of guys start a hedge fund and raise $10 million or even $50 or $100 million. Their fee is 1.5% fixed on assets and 20% of the profits, but they can’t survive on the fixed fee. They have a lot of overhead in space, accounting, computers, back office, and technology. Then they have three analysts and a trader to pay salaries to, plus hard dollars to fork out for Bloomberg terminals and research services. The fixed fee doesn’t even cover the overhead, so there is no money left for the partners. Unless the partners have some money to begin with, they have nothing to live on.