...and the first day in our office space. Right now I'm sitting in a cubicle that is no more than 5x5, and I'll probably be here until a real office opens up down the hall early next year. We have decided to save money in certain areas at first, and office space is one of them. I cut the cord with my former employer last week, so my income is back to zero for a short while.
This initial entry comes well into a nine-month process to build a private investment partnership. There are three primary architects of this effort, plus a silent partner. I will introduce the other fellows in subsequent postings.
At the risk of boring you to death, a little bit about me: I have managed money professionally for over ten years at a handful of investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citi among them). Somewhere along the way, I found that I was pretty good at keeping the risk down and the returns up. So I kept tweaking things and backtesting data and generally started living inside a spreadsheet until several of my friends and clients encouraged me to start a hedge fund. I was fortunate enough to partner with two other very smart and experienced individuals, each with far more credibility than myself. I'm 38 and married with three daughters. My degrees are from Duke and Georgia.
Today I have already signed up for a parking pass and brought a 75 pound color printer up seven floors. Bloomberg is supposed to get back to me in 24 hours about getting access to a terminal. I need a power strip so that the cord to my lamp can stretch to the wall socket so I can see better. It's a far cry from the ivory towers I've come from thus far, but it feels far more worthwhile.
There will be a few things I will not directly address in this blog. One is the identity of clients, for obvious reasons; another is the exact amount of assets under management. A third item is the detail of the investment strategy, although I will certainly discuss it extensively in more general terms. (At its most granular lavels, the strategy is highly quantitative and makes liberal use of derivatives, and timing is also an important factor, so trying it at home without professional guidance is probably a bad idea.) One of the architects of the firm has chosen to remain anonymous for a variety of reasons, so I will identify him by a pseudonym in future posts. Otherwise, the playing field is pretty wide open.
I'm having a blast already - why in the world was I ever working for the man?
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