Hedge Funds

Modern Day Gomorrah: Goodbye Greenwich Culture

If NYC’s Meatpacking District was Sodom, with it’s teeming masses of 20-something investment bankers running across cobblestone streets waving Amex Black Cards and puking off the side of luxury hotel rooftop bars, then surely, Greenwich, Connecticut was the modern-day equivalent of Gomorrah. One of the particularly offensive attributes of the 2003-2007 bull market was the rise…

The New Glossary of Finance Terms

The New Glossary of Finance Terms Bonus:  A form of extortion whereby employees of a company extract either shareholder or taxpayer money for their own pleasure regardless of the success or failure of said company. Derivatives:  Trading vehicles created by over-educated  finance professionals for whom speculating in stocks and bonds was not quite risky or volatile enough. Bulge…

Don't Blame the Repeal of Glass-Steagall…Blame Risk Management

Over on Breakingviews, Hugo Dixon is taking issue with those who believe bringing back some version of the Glass-Steagall Act would prevent the financial collapse we’re now fighting through every day. Why would anybody run a casino and a utility under the same roof? That is the supposedly killer argument of those who want to…

Scumdog Billionaires: 2 More Hedge Fund Ponzi Schemes This Week

Chant with me, y’all:  Pon-ZI! Pon-ZI! Pon-ZI! Pon-ZI! PON-ZI! PON-ZI! Wait til you hear what these Pillars of Society were up to! Prince Charming #1: Westgate Capital Management’s James Nicholson, had a fake accounting firm since 2004.  He set up a “virtual office” and had calls to this phantom auditor forwarded to himself!  In the…

Ben Shoval is Funny…I Can Prove It!

I know, I know…Finance Comedy is kind of a geeky sub-genre.  You know what?  I don’t care… I’m a finance geek and I like laughing.  That said, let me introduce you to Ben Shoval, a hedge fund guy by day and stand up comic by night who is funny whether you work on The Street or…

Top 10 ETFs They Haven't Created Yet

With over 400 Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s) on the market right now and new ones being issued each week, it would seem that we could be reaching the point of ETF overload. That said, it would be tough to say that we have too many ETF’s until we get to the point that we start seeing products like the ones listed below…

Barron's Buzz: January 4th, 2009

Quick thoughts on this week’s Barron’s… Bubble in Treasuries?  Yeah, probably…Read the cover article, called Get Out Now by Andrew Bary and you decide. Kopin Tan does the obligatory “cash on the sidelines about to come into the market” story in The Trader column.  I’ll admit, the figures are huge, but they’ve always seemed huge,…

Graduating in a Bear Market? Wall Street's Not Hiring.

With graduation approaching for the Class of 2009, college seniors are scrambling to find jobs by the spring. Let’s hope they don’t have their hearts set on Wall Street. By the time the big unwind is through, Wall Street (and peripheral sectors) will probably have lost more than a quarter of a million jobs. Unlike ’87 or ’01-’02, most of these jobs won’t be coming back.

Hedgies Still Hearing "Redemption Song"

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaRXuJ0eTDo] “Redemption Calls“, sung to the tune of Bob Marley‘s Redemption Song. Old clients, yes they call I ask me for the NAV. Minutes after I sold stock, into a bottomless pit. But my fund was made strong by the black box it was built on. We trade in this generation, leveraged to the gills….