Apparently, she already has $50 million for this fund, “Kenbelle Capital LP”, and is targeting “12-17% returns” per year. Megalomaniac self ego worship? A four year history of wrong decisions and two failed or struggling companies? Total disconnect from reality? Sounds like a promising business venture.
I hear layfield, and associates, go on the road show promoting the fund. They do a lot of palm pressing if you get my drift.
I wonder how her hedge fund would have done betting on all those munis to go bankrupt 3 years ago.
those Madoff investors will never learn…
Yeah, that’s the thing, right? You can go on TV and say anything you want, but now there is money on the table. It will be much harder to recover from losses in an actual fund. One problem I see is that Whitney keeps chasing singluar themes - either banks collapsing, or munis defaulting, or this time - she is talking about rapid economic expansion in the middle north USA. Even if this is statistically a good call, a lot of eggs are in the same basket here.
Just because she’s a one track voice on TV, doesn’t mean she’d run a fund that way, right?
she should stick with just selling her research. People will pay her to listen to her ideas. She had a good idea that worked (one hit wonder). but she should leave the actual trading to someone else
Ok, I suppose anyone deserves the benefit of a doubt. However, keep in mind that she is calling her fund the “American Revival Fund” and has been pitching this America Heartland thesis in her investor presentation.
She failed to mention that the standard deviation is probably 20% around the mean.
Nah, JBL and Ron Simmons are going to provide security for her.
You have to question someone’s judgment when they marry a WWE star.
The biggest one hit wonder of them all is Nouriel Roubini.
You only need one hit to sell your speil forever.
the last paragraph is priceless…she is cleary insane. Whitney Hedge Fund Gets Backing From BlueCrest Partners
Nov 14 2013 | 10:41am ET
Star analyst Meredith Whitney’s new hedge fund has received a vote of confidence from Michael Platt and other BlueCrest Capital Management partners.
Kenbelle Capital started trading November 1 with about $50 million from BlueCrest partners and other investors, reports Bloomberg News, citing a copy of a fund presentation.
Whitney co-founded Kenbelle with Stephen M. Schwartz, a veteran of Guggenheim Partners and SAC Capital Advisors, and has hired Mark Innaimo, formerly of Bay Crest Partners, as a senior trader.
Kenbelle’s American Revival Fund targets annual returns of 12% to 17%, and will focus on U.S. equities, seeking to profit from what Whitney predicts will be a cycle of growth in “Heartland” states like Nebraska and South Dakota (a theory she explored in a book, “Fate of the States”).
Whitney, who came to fame in 2007 when she predicted trouble for Citigroup, started an advisory firm Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, in 2009. She closed the firm’s brokerage unit earlier this year to focus on the Kenbelle launch.
Meredith Whitney Advisory Group has lost money every year since its debut in 2009 and had lost some prominent customers, among them Elliott Management, Paulson & Co. and Balyasny Asset Management.
Whitney told potential investors in New York this week that she’d started her own investment firm in part because she “was tired of other people profiting from her trade ideas,” said Bloomberg, citing a person who attended the event.
Most people who move from the advisory side to the buy-side end up losing money because being a good advisor doesn’t mean you can be a good investor, but obviously the potential payoffs on the buy-side are much bigger. With all the negative press she has been getting over the last five years, I can’t blame her for trying something different.
^ Getting your call right is much, much, much easier than getting the timing right. There are plenty of people who have a great trackrecord (like predicting doom for 5 years before it finally occurs) but few get the timing right. Those that are right on an idea but still lose money on it are abundant.
this makes me question Bluecrest more than anything…
Exactly. All those nuts on the corner saying the world is going to end are right, they just likely have their timing off.
FWIW, I called the dot com bust and the housing bust at least a year or two before they happened. I didn’t back up my calls with my money though and no one with money listens to me. The college/university bubble will be the next to bust.
How would a college bubble manifest in asset pricing? For real estate, the effect was pretty obvious - everyone’s home prices declined. This was particularly troublesome, since home value comprise a significant wealth percentage of many people. However, for education, what would be the obvious economic effects?