Do NOT start an emerging manager under any circumstances. Do not work for a pre-launch manager without a nine figure seed investor, even if they offer you “equity”, even if they’re super smart, even if you’re getting a base pay raise from your last job. Just don’t do it.
Being an emerging manager is like doing a PhD because you want to be a tenure track professor. It is presented to you as the natural continuation of your path thus far, you have probably interacted only with success stories, and you absolutely, positively, Should. Not. Do. it.
Here is a checklist of conditions to be a EM: 1. Mom/Dad are worth over $10mm 2. You worked for GS/MS/etc 3. You worked for Citadel/etc 4. You personally know 5+ allocators willing to drop $25m+ 5. You actually know how to manage a portfolio
That gets you to ~25% success chance
Borrowing PPP funds to providing trading capital which you subsequently lose. Big disgraced financier energy
Hmmm this is the second person among my first 100 followers to go to jail for securities fraud, along with Martin Shkreli. The remaining 98 should consider yourself ON NOTICE!
Here is a to-scale superposition the Shinkansen main line on the USA. Its *entire* rail length would be almost exactly that of a single hypothetical Montreal-Atlanta line. They are adding a direct Tokyo-Osaka link (black) for the low price of $80bn. It will be done in 2045.
If you do the work on what would happen if ARK liquidated, you do not get anywhere near what bears imagine. ARKK would be down 5-10% if it went to cash tomorrow, ARKG would be down 7-13%, and all the other funds would be down <5%. 10%-20% of float is big but not *that* big.
Put another way: if you bought 100% of a company's stock via tender, you'd drive up the price by the takeover premium, which is roughly ~30% . Thus, if you buy 20% of a liquid name's float, a first order estimate of your price impact would be ~6%, and selling just unwinds that.
Closing the loop on this: Today ARK had combined outflows of over $600 million, their second-worst flow ever in dollar terms and their third-worst ever as a percentage of asset base. ARKG lagged XBI by -240 bps, and the same model in the above tweet predicted... -234 bps.
Inspired by @EricBalchunas: which one of these four US-listed ETPs produced the worst investor return of all time, in dollar terms?
The answer is "n/a", my original query was wrong, but of the four options shown it's AMLP with a -$9.2 billion loss. VXX is only -$8.8bn, then DBC is a mere -$3.7bn and GDX outside top 25 with -$2.1bn. Also, XIV is +$2bn over its lifetime, which is in the top 5% of all ETPs!
Note this is technically 20-year investor total returns, not inception to date, but for basically every ETF except SPY and QQQ that's the same thing. Code to generate:
Since she’s now officially the Main Character on here today, I’m amazed at how perfect an avatar this lady is for Econ Brain. Between her Narcan paper and her Ban the Box (can’t screen out nonviolent criminals before job interview itself), it’s a very clear pattern.
Step 1: Someone complains about [current societal outcome] and proposes [intervention] to fix it. You like CSO (or dislike funding I), but since CSO is seen as bad by normal people, you can’t directly argue It’s Good, Actually, since you work somewhere more respectable than GMU.
Step 2: Say “Look, we ALL agree CSO is bad, we just disagree on how to best address the problem! Let’s study it and find out.” Now, take a $5mm grant from the Definitely Not Causing CSO At All Charitable Trust to study it in depth [ed: This is where you underpay your RAs]