The Little Book of Hedge Funds

Chapter Ten

From Wall Street to Park Avenue

Setting Up Shop at the Hedge Fund Hotel

No other career in finance gives you the freedom to be your own boss and invest in anything, anywhere, that gets your juices flowing. . . . And most important: Nowhere else on Wall Street can you get so rich, so fast, so young.

—Bethany McLean, “Everybody’s Going Hedge Funds,” Fortune, June 8, 1998

Prior to the economic crisis of 2007 to 2009, the best and brightest were lured to Park Avenue and Greenwich, Connecticut, in the hopes of scoring a job at a prominent hedge fund or, better yet, starting their own fund! Intrigued by the exclusive world of hedge funds, these young hopefuls had visions of dollar signs, private jets, and beautiful women dancing in their heads. Who can blame them? Everywhere you turned, it seemed that there was another article glorifying a hedge fund superhero who was making millions of millions of dollars in just one year! (And by millions, I mean three-figure millions! In 2005, it was reported that the top 25 hedge fund managers were making an average of $363 million a year!) Article after article prophesied the hedge fund invasion of Wall Street, claiming: “Today, the money that talks the loudest in America belongs to a closely knit, inscrutable group of men who run hedge funds.”

Although those days of economic windfall may have passed, the mysterious world of hedge funds still attracts many of the so-called best and the brightest, causing many a manager of mutual funds ...