Funding a Hedge Fund, How Easy?

I would suggest becoming a CTA. Trade your capital (whether it be your own or others) and audit it everyday. I'm not sure it'll be 100% effective but having an office in one of the larger exchanges do help when networking, larger meaning CBOT or CME. The offices upstairs are obviously 95% trading oriented. Make friends and funny thing is most traders make friends with other traders pretty well.

Most of my friends are trader. Well, I've got my GF who's not and her friends but friends I make on my own are traders. I tend to enjoy talking about trading and people around me are like that too. We like to share viable information about the business and that's pretty much how we communicate. It's sad in a sense but that's our recreation... so f*ck it.

I tend to go out for lunch with friends. I tend to diversify who I bring to lunch and many of my friends do the same thing. It's really networking, sharing each other's network.

Sometimes, you meet guys you know who you didn't expect or friends from other occasions which firms the relationship. It's very business oriented and it's somethings that girls would hate (you know sharing feelings and being intimate with each others problems), but it's fun being in that circle.

Another thing is CBOT guys stick with CBOT guys. CME guys stick with CME guys. Or each exchange has a strong connection within it's own exchange. It's rare that CBOT guy being close to CME guy.

There are things like that, that's what I can say from my experiences here in Chicago.
 
You know what is funny to me?

Of all the wealthy people that I know, they are the best ones at making more money with their money - how do you think they made it in the first place?

As far as getting money for a Hedge Fund, I worked for a small Hedge Fund as a programmer. These people were connected up the wazoo, and still had a hard time getting large amounts of capital to manage. The thing that got them over the top was _other_ MONSTER hedge funds that became very interested in the software we had developed to test ideas, as well as any trading systems that we came up with. Once they had "sucked us" for the information they wanted, they were gone after the contract expired. However, we got quite a bit out of it as well...This was back in 1990.

There are sooooo many Hede funds now, I would be looking elsewhere to make money. If I thought that I could take my stake in trading and make a lot more that year in Real Estate development, I would and I have.

I wouldn't give anyone a dime of my money to "invest" or trade for me, and that has nothing to do with the fact that I know how to trade...Once you know how to make money and have enough to get over the initial hump of getting a stake, whether it be trading or Real Estate or whatever, assuming no catastrophe, you will always be better off then handing it to someone else.

Success breeds success.

nitro
 
Quote from nitro:

You know what is funny to me?

Of all the wealthy people that I know, they are the best ones at making more money with their money - how do you think they made it in the first place?

As far as getting money for a Hedge Fund, I worked for a small Hedge Fund as a programmer. These people were connected up the wazoo, and still had a hard time getting large amounts of capital to manage. The thing that got them over the top was _other_ MONSTER hedge funds that became very interested in the software we had developed to test ideas, as well as any trading systems that we came up with. Once they had "sucked us" for the information they wanted, they were gone after the contract expired.

There are sooooo many Hede funds now, I would be looking elsewhere to make money. If I thought that I could take my stake in trading and make a lot more that year in Real Estate development, I would and I have.

I wouldn't give anyone a dime of my money to "invest" or trade for me, and that has nothing to do with the fact that I know how to trade...Once you know how to make money and have enough to get over the initial hump of getting a stake, whether it be trading or Real Estate or whatever, assuming no catastrophe, you will always be better off then handing it to someone else.

Success breeds success.

nitro
More...

True true...

Still, lots of successful old floor trader want to diversify. There's few patterns:

1. They want to have actuals. They get into real estate and other sorts of physical investement. They tell me that it becomes a urge to hold something in actuals if you trade the market. You never see 100 lots of S&P contracts or 5000 bushels of corn in front of you and they get the urge to invest in something they can see. (Nitro, is this you?)

2. They see guys upstairs making more money trading other market. They feel they're missing out on other opportunity and want to get a piece of the action. Floor traders are masters of that specific product. They can't be on the floor and trade 2+ other products.

I guess it's a natural tendency of a human to seek for what they don't have. It's 1/4 insecurity, 1/4 envy, 1/4 greed, and 1/4 opportunists(risk-takers). It's hard to hear about a old traders surviving (even in the old grain pits) that doesn't have other ventures.

Still, they tend to separate the whole matter. Trading = trading. Ventures are ventures. Reminds me of Michael Marcus with his real estate venture.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top