Quote from Don Bright:
I have asked this of dozens of potentially good traders. "Why give away 80% of your profits, when trading with us will give you $millions to trade with, and you keep 100% of your profits, and don't have a bunch of friends and relatives and other investors breathing down your neck?"
Because managing a hedge fund offers the benefits of leverage without additional risk. Let us make some assumptions about a start-up hedge fund and examine the results. If the average hedge fund start-up has $5,000,000 under management excluding the $100,000 of the manager's capital:
5,000,000 * 0.35 * 0.20 = 350,000
5,000,000 * 0.25 * 0.20 = 250,000
5,000,000 * 0.15 * 0.20 = 150,000
5,000,000 * 0.05 * 0.20 = 50,000
With a mere 5% return the hedge fund manager achieved a 50% ROI on their own capital without increasing risk. The appeal of starting a hedge fund versus joining a proprietary trading firm is obvious, especially when one factors compounded earnings on management fees, and the opportunity for growing the capital under management.
-segv