Other People’s Money with Max Wiethe

Almost everyone who works in finance dreams of one day showcasing their trading or investing prowess by starting their own hedge fund, but being a good trader is only one line item in a long list of skills required to be a successful hedge fund manager. Benn Eifert, Managing Partner of QVR Advisors, who himself has built his firm into one that manages $2 billion in assets, discusses the important interpersonal skills, operational considerations, and marketing duties that also fall squarely on the shoulders of the founding portfolio manager. Eifert also touches on why pod shops have been so dominant in attracting both assets and talent, his outlook for single managers and the hedge fund industry, and the growth of listed fund products using options and other derivatives.

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If you weren’t in large and often expensive technology stocks you likely struggled as a hedge fund manager in 2024. For small/mid-cap value investors like Kyle Mowery, Portfolio Manager and Founder of Grizzly Rock Capital, who’ve sold their investors a mandate that makes it nearly impossible to go buy the NVIDIAs of the world you can only fall back on communication and the clear expectations you’ve set with your investors. The problems plaguing small cap value managers are not new though, and if you are still practicing what Mowery calls “the old ways,” 2024 was likely not the first tough year you’ve had to explain. Here, Mowery explains how he’s adjusted his strategy over 13 years of existence to adapt to changing market structure, why he thinks of you have skills joining a pod is better than starting your own fund, and things he would do differently if he was setting up Grizzly Rock in 2025.

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Find more on Grizzly Rock Capital here: https://www.grizzlyrockcapital.com/

When was the last time you heard about an exciting new mutual fund launch? It’s probably been a while. Despite ETFs, hedge funds, and burgeoning asset classes like private credit taking all the headlines, mutual funds still control over $20 trillion in AUM. So, how does one raise assets in the 2020s with a product many associate with a time gone by? Eric Crittenden, CIO and Founder of Stand Point Asset Management, joins OPM to share how his mutual fund has done just that and reached over $1 billion in AUM in less than 5 years.

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Having raised over $450m in less than 6 months, Warren Pies, Founder of 3Fourteen Research and Portfolio Manager of $FCTE, has had one of the most successful independent ETF launches of all time. Despite the seemingly overnight success of his fund management business, the real story is about the steady growth of his research business that feeds into everything they do.. He explains how his research business has become a pipeline of investor interest in his ETF business and how research relationships flip the traditional client interaction on its head. He also discusses why he chose to focus on setting good expectations with reasonable clients rather than playing the flashy retail newsletter game.

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Noel Smith, founder of Convex Asset Management has spent most of his career outside of the world of managing other people’s money. Instead, he traded his own capital as a proprietary trader. Prop traders are famed for generating staggering rates of return, but because they have no interest in raising money, their secrets and strategies generally remain behind closed doors. However, he has decided to bring these strategies to the hedge fund world at Convex Asset Management and while they don’t scale to produce the same level of returns their lack of availability outside the prop world gives him differentiation in the product marketplace. In this interview, Smith explains why props can make so much more money, how much harder capital raising is than he anticipated, and why he ranks relationships and likability higher than performance when it comes to hedge fund success.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:16 What is Prop Trading?

10:51 Moving to the Hedge Fund World

16:36 The Hedge Fund Popularity Contest

23:04 Volatility Trading Strategies

27:27 Extracting Information From The Options Market

32:09 Scaling Prop Strategies

34:44 Alpha Degradation

39:31 Being Good Is Not Enough

48:03 Dealing With Extreme Performance

53:28 Long-term Vision For Convex Asset Management

Jamie Carter, Partner and Managing Director at Variis Partners has spent much of his career focused on the world of long-only emerging-market investment boutiques. In this interview with Max Wiethe, Carter discusses the huge differences between building a long only business and a hedge fund business, why launching fund vehicles out of the UK has become more difficult, the differences in raising capital in the US, UK, and Europe, and why he thinks emerging markets are the last hold outs for fundamental active managers. He also explains why EM investors and allocators are holding their collective breath waiting to see how the Trump administration’s policies will impact global markets.

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You can learn more about Variis Partners on their website: https://www.variispartners.co.uk

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Since Aristides Capital’s inception in August 2008, Chris Brown has returned over 1,000% for their investors with a stunning 16-year track record of no losing years. In this interview with Max Wiethe, Brown explains how they’ve been able to sustain these results and grow their business to over $300m in AUM all while operating far from the typical financial centers where hedge funds cluster. They discuss how accumulating a plethora of lower capacity strategies, hiring and working with “well intentioned nerds,” and maintaining rigorous processes for post-hoc analysis and feedback have been some of the keys to their investment success. They also touch on asset gathering from both HNW and institutional investors, attracting talent, and the reality that for small funds being in the top quartile or even decile of performance is a near necessity for reaching critical mass.

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Ask anyone and they will tell you it has never been harder to start a hedge fund. That’s why so many of the most successful launches of late have been funds emerging from a prior firm with the backing of the big boss, otherwise known as spinouts. Julian Robertson’s Tiger Cubs are the perhaps most famous spinouts, but it is still an extremely popular trend today. Farid Guindo, CIO and founder of Drill Capital Management is taking advantage of these dynamics to launch his new fund with the backing of his mentor and former boss at Bornite Capital, Dan Dreyfus. In this interview with Max Wiethe, Guindo discusses the ins and outs of fund spinouts, the importance of transparency and relationship building with bosses and mentors, and how his experience working at Tiger Cubs and other spinouts solidified his belief that this was the right path for Drill Capital after deciding it was best to be a separate vehicle outside of the Bornite umbrella.

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Dan Rasmussen has built his firm Verdad Capital into a billion-dollar asset manager on the back of one core activity, producing high quality research. Since Verdad’s inception in 2014, they have produced almost 500 pieces of research that they publish on their website weekly and distribute both on Twitter and to their large email list of readers. This research serves two functions. It’s both the backbone of the strategies employed at this highly quantitative firm, and a point of connection with existing and potential investors. In this interview with Max Wiethe, Rasmussen discusses how he’s used research to showcase his authentic self and build an audience that provides enumerable benefits. They also discuss the compliance process for publishing research, how he has built out his team and Verdad’s internship program, and why he takes a more SaaS approach to product market fit.

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Follow Dan Rasmussen on Twitter: https://x.com/verdadcap

Follow Max Wiethe on Twitter: https://x.com/maxwiethe

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

03:43 The Value of Research and Verdad’s First Big Thesis

10:27 The SaaS Approach Product Market Fit

20:26 Investing in Human Capital

24:21 The Research and Publishing Process

28:41 Research as Brand Building

33:06 Compliance and Misconceptions About Public Statements

41:35 Authenticity and Investor Archetypes

46:07 Making Mistakes

49:45 Being Early on PE

Hedge fund strategies like distressed, long short equities, relative value, etc. are well defined and understood by allocators. As a result, funds that fit neatly into these style boxes can easily answer the question, “what type of fund are you?” But what if you don’t fit neatly into one of these boxes? Be too exact and no one will search for your niche strategy. Push the envelope to fit into one of these boxes and suddenly investors feel like they’ve been tricked into a meeting. This is a problem that Louis Camhi, founder and CIO of RLH Capital, has had to deal with since launching his SPAC focused strategy in 2021. In this interview with Max Wiethe, Camhi discusses why educating investors about SPACs and defining his fund for style box focused investors has been harder than finding interesting SPAC trades. They also touch on outsourcing back and middle office, the little things you don’t think about when you are working for a larger fund, and the tradeoffs between SMAs and pooled vehicles.

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Follow Jack Farley on Twitter https://x.com/JackFarley96

Harris Kupperman, CIO and Founder of Praetorian Capital joins Max Wiethe to share how he’s grown his firm to over $300 million in AUM, largely by breaking the institutional mold. They discuss Kupperman’s choice to build a strategy with UHNW investors and family offices in mind rather than traditional institutional investors and the benefits of a diversified base of LPs. They also discuss the firm’s blog Kuppy’s Korner, the importance of authenticity in brand building, and his choice to register the fund as a 506(c).

Clarification: At 50:48 Harris mentions that almost half the capital in the fund is from gains. As of September 30th, 2024 44% of the capital is from gains.

Sign up for Kuppy’s Korner at: https://pracap.com

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Building a successful hedge fund is hard. It’s even harder when you’re fighting the perpetual upward momentum of the market. Despite this headwind, Carson Block, CIO and Founder of Muddy Waters Capital, has made his firm into a successful fund management business and taken down billion-dollar frauds in the process. In this interview with Max Wiethe, Block explains why starting a fund became necessary to pursue activist short selling in a serious capacity, the pitfalls of capital raising and the different types of investors who are interested in specialized strategies like theirs, and how he is expanding his business with new strategies beyond activist short selling. Recorded on October 21st, 2024.

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Max Wiethe interviews the very best investment fund managers about the business of Other People's Money. Max is in partnership with Jack Farley and Other People's Money is part of the Monetary Matters podcast network.

Stay tuned for the first episode of Other People's Money with activist short seller Carson Block, airing in late October 2024.

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