Quote from archimedes:
240MM is a drop in the bucket compared to the insane amounts of hedgie money sloshing around... with all those successful careers he launched, Vic could have ginned up that much in sympathy cash. He's probably running money exactly the same way as before. If there were a way to hedge naked risk and still get 50% plus returns from a return-to-the-mean strategy, it would have been discovered and arbed away by other funds. Alternatively, if Vic has really found some secret sauce that gets him more reward for less risk, he should be running a lot more than 240MM in this sea-of-liquidity environment.
What's changed is the sophistication of Vic's customers and the sheer size of their funds under management. It wouldn't be hard for an institution or large hedge fund to create a 'portable alpha' type strategy where, instead of investing $100 million aggressively, they give $10 mil to a hard charger like Vic and put the rest somewhere safe.
Or a long / short fund with a few billion on both sides of the market could toss a few crumbs to Vic just to cover the cost of their short sales--if he keeps cranking out 50% returns, great, that covers the interest on the shorts. If he blows up, who cares, that means the shorts are going down.
Point being, he isn't likely to have turned over a new leaf... heck, just look at the name of the firm, "Matador"... the guy bragged about his near-death experience with the Yen in his book, and he hasn't changed his tune one bit since then.
Its more likely that Vic's customers understand the risks these days, are sophisticated enough to compensate for them, and see a few tens of millions here and there as small potatoes. His smart customers, that is. There are probably at least a handful of wide-eyed investors in there who think its different this time.
