Hello, I work as an analyst for one of the largest endowment/foundations in the country. We are set up with a full internal investment office which does all of the asset allocation, manager selection and monitoring, and portfolio research. We do not manage the money directly–rather, we are always on the lookout for great investment firms to directly manage our assets. Our office set-up and investment philosophy takes after the Swensen model. The firms we look for tend to be value-oriented, think like business owners, have a long time horizon and not fear price volatility. Such managers often have concentrated portfolios. Many of our favorite managers are boutique firms running a single strategy and who have remained reasonable in terms of assets in order to focus on investing. We look to have very long-term relationships with our managers, so we are constantly looking for managers across all asset classes even if current valuations afford few opportunities in that asset class at the moment. If you believe you work for a firm that fits these characteristics, I would love to hear from you. Please email me at endowmentanalyst@gmail.com. I am not using my work email address in order to keep my employer confidential on this forum. If you contact me and I think we might be interested, I will respond from my work email. Thank you all for your time. Joel
what the F. ok, first, if you are indeed “one of the largest” funds in the country, you should have thousands of investment managers trying to call you trying to get your funds invested with them. They will literally come to your office. Having to come to this forum and ask is incredibly sad. I call BS. Your likely some person wanting a job, and wants names of famous PM’s to work for, but too freaking lazy to do your own homework.
You’re suspect brah.
Guys, this fund is legitimate. They manage money for deposed Nigerian royal family members living overseas. All they need is for your business to help them move money out of Nigeria. Guaranteed returns and all they need is your corporate bank account. We would be fools not to reply!
Haha I wish I were smart enough to have come up with that kind of ploy back when I was looking for jobs in this business. You overestimate me. Seriously, though, I’m inclined to respond to a few of your points. You’re right–we have thousands of investment managers with flashy presentations and well dressed investor relations people knocking our door down every year trying to convince us to invest with them. We take meetings with these firms, and have found some great investors amongst them. However, there is also a lot of value in going out and searching for ourselves. A lot of times the people knocking on our door are exactly the kind that we DON’T want to invest with. Like I said, we typically have a preference for boutique firms with one strategy. We also like to find firms while they are small in terms of assets as 1) this allows us to establish a deeper relationship with the firm 2) size is often the enemy of performance and 3) there is a longer runway for growth. Firms who knock our doors down are often the ones focused on raising money and growing the firm in terms of assets (which means higher compensation) rather than those who are focused on achieving the highest possible investment returns. Also, the people who are knocking on our door are probably also knocking on all our peers’ doors. While our main focus is to achieve the highest possible absolute returns for the endowment we compete with our peers for students and resources and so we do have to think about competing for investment returns. It is very difficult to gain a competitive advantage from investing in the same firms as our peers. To the extent we can find great investors off the beaten path, we can gain the upper hand. Joel
Hi Joel, What kind of track record do you consider investable? Three years of market beating returns? Or does it need to be longer?
Bromion, We would definitely consider firms with that kind of track record. What’s really important is a history of decision points that we can use to underwrite the firm. We have funded firms with a shorter track record than that I believe. Joel
anfieldanalyst Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Bromion, > We would definitely consider firms with that kind > of track record. What’s really important is a > history of decision points that we can use to > underwrite the firm. > > We have funded firms with a shorter track record > than that I believe. > > Joel Joel sent you a msg.
anfieldanalyst Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What’s really important is a > history of decision points that we can use to > underwrite the firm. Can you explain what this means? Thanks. I’m curious because I’d like to launch my own fund at some point and raising capital is the one area I know very little about (sort of ironic I guess since having capital is almost the most important part, but I’ve seen all of the other aspects of running a hedge fund in good detail and feel that I could replicate them without too much trouble).
Bromion, Basically, in order to gain enough conviction to want to invest with you, we need to be able to underwrite decisions the investment staff has made along the way. I think of the track record more as the actual performance you have achieved (15% annually, for example)–this is helpful, but doesn’t tell you as much about how the firm will perform going forward necessarily. If you get the transparency to look through to individual buy/sell/hold decisions, however, you can more easily gain confidence in the firm’s ability to outperform going forward. For example, for an equity fund we might ask for historical holdings and analyze the individual holdings where you’ve gained or lost the most money, where you’ve made mistakes, etc. We can also look at the underlying fundamentals of the securities–were you able to correctly identify companies that would continue to grow earnings? How many of your companies required leverage in order to achieve reasonable equity returns? and so on. This, to me, is more important than the magical annualized performance statistic. You could get lucky and have a great 5 or even 10 year number (I’ve seen it) but we’ll probably be able to tell by doing a deep dive on your holdings. I don’t know that other institutions feel the same way–I believe many are more focused on the annualized numbers. But if they haven’t done the deep dive and tested the meat behind the performance, they may well redeem at the worst possible time after you’ve had a temporary bad run. Take it from me, one of the most critical elements of a successful investment firm is having money from the right limited partners. The hedge fund arena is littered with firms (even some great ones) who failed in 2008 because their low quality investors redeemed. Joel
e-Vestment Alliance (create some queries and find your ideal manager) or any other number of manager databases. This is insane. .
Hello, I am Mr.David Mark. an Auditor of a BANK OF THE NORTH INTERNATIONAL,ABUJA (FCT). I have the courage to Crave indulgence for this important business believing that you will never let me down either now or in the future. Some years ago, an American Mining consultant/ contractor with the Nigeria NationalPetroleum Corporation,made a numbered time (fixed)deposit for twelve calendarmonths, valued $12M.USD (TWELVE MILLION US DOLLARS) in an account. On maturity,The bank sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply.After a month, The bank sent another reminder and finally his contractemployers, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation wrote to inform the bankthat he died without MAKING A WILL, and all attempts by the American Embassy totrace his next of kin was fruitless. I therefore, made further investigation and discovered that the beneficiary was an immigrant from Jamaica and only recentlyobtained American citizenship. He did not decla re any kin or relations in allhis official documents, including his Bank deposit paper work. This money totalamount$12M.USD ( TWELVE MILLION US DOLLARS)is still sitting in my bank asdormant Account. No one will ever come forward to claim it, and according to Nigerian Banking policy, after some years, the money will revert to the ownership of the igerian Government if the account owner is certified dead. This is the situation, and my proposal is that I am looking for a foreigner who will stand in as the next of kin to beneficiary, and OPEN a Bank Account abroad to facilitate the transfer of this money. This is simple, all you have to do is to OPEN an account anywhere in the world and send me its detail for me to arrange the proper money transfer paperwork, and facilitate the transfer.The money will then be paid into this Account for us to share in the ratio of 60% for me, 35 % for you and 5% for expenses that might come up during transfer process. There is no risk at all, and all the paper work for this transaction will be done by me using my posit n and connections in the banks in Nigeria. This business transaction is guaranteed.And the first phase of the transfer will be ($4M.USD) FOUR MILLION DOLLARS as advised by our insider in the bank.If you are interested, please reply immediately through my personal email sending the following details: (1) Your Full Name/Address (2) Your Private Telephone/fax Number. Please observe the utmost confidentiality, and be rest assured that this transaction would be most profitable for both of us because I shall require your assistance to invest some of my share in your country. I look forward to your earliest reply. Yours, Mr.David Mark.
^ I’m in. Here’s my info: B4nk of 4mer!c4 Account: B16 A55 5II17
My investment strategy involves tracing star paths and elephant hibernation patterns. I also look at random p orn and shoot my load onto the financials page of my local newspaper and invest where the largest puddle lands.
SuperiorReturn Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > My investment strategy involves tracing star paths > and elephant hibernation patterns. > I also look at random p orn and shoot my load > onto the financials page of my local newspaper and > invest where the largest puddle lands. AaaaHHHH. The old spray and pray. Smart.
p.s. i am also of large endowment