Evanston Capital Management
22 statements across 2 episodes · 6 bullish · 5 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Jul 17, 2017 by Adam Blitz · said 18 times in 7 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Ted Seides (12), Michael Liddy (2), Kristen Van Gelder (2), Adam Blitz (2)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 2 mentions in 1 episode
2022 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2021 9 mentions in 2 episodes 5 per episode
2017 4 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about Evanston Capital Management, oldest first
Jul 17, 2017 positive
Jul 17, 2017
Blitz: Manager selection depends heavily on qualitative soft factors
“We think so much of manager selection and trying to figure out who's going to do well prospectively is based on much softer
Factors such as, you know, why is the person doing this?
What drives them?
Do they really love this?
How competitive are they versus are…”
Jul 17, 2017 bearish
Jul 17, 2017
Jul 17, 2017 neutral
Blitz: Track records built on low capital bases struggle to scale
“And a lot of times in the past, you might have what appears to be an optically good track record, but it was done on a very low capital base, or there was some sort of issue that enabled them to do well out of the gates, but at any sort of larger size, you kno…”
Jul 17, 2017
Blitz: Evanston avoids tiny toehold allocations, investing in size from day one
“And I'd say when we do our day one investments, we do it with conviction and in size. And so you know, we're not believers in, hey, you know, let's take a 10 basis point position in a manager so we can all pat ourselves on the back that we knew that that manag…”
Jul 17, 2017 negative
Jul 17, 2017 positive
Jul 17, 2017
Blitz: Bottom-up manager selection beats top-down asset allocation in hedge funds
“Much more bottom up. You know, we think the scarce resource are really great, great managers. And, you know, we've learned this the hard way, right? When you try to say, here's my view of the world, let's shove a mediocre manager in to fit that view of the wor…”
Jul 17, 2017 positive
Blitz: Allocators should add to underperforming managers and trim top performers
“You want to be reducing when someone's doing well. You want to be adding when someone's doing poorly if everything else, all else is equal. You want to be investing in a new manager, at least new for our portfolio after a period in which they've been strugglin…”
Jul 17, 2017 negative
Blitz: Evanston immediately rejects hedge fund managers showing a sleaze factor
“You know, we have a term we just call sleaze factor, which is whether it's on the investment side or the operational side, if you're meeting with the manager and you're just not getting a great vibe from them, you're getting incomplete answers. Just, it doesn'…”
Jul 17, 2017 positive
Jul 17, 2017 positive
Blitz: Trade structuring is a more sustainable edge than directional macro calls
“Something like the ability to structure trades very well, or, you know, say, hey, here's my macro view, but I'm going to position myself in such a way that if I'm right, you know, I'm going to do really well, and if I'm wrong, I'm going to, you know, lose a li…”
Jul 17, 2017 neutral
Jul 17, 2017
Blitz: Evanston requires unanimous nine-person committee approval for new managers
“So we have a nine person investment committee that is the formal kind of investment body, if you will, of the firm. And we need unanimous approval of all nine of those investment committee members before someone makes it in the portfolio. Only really need one,…”
Jul 17, 2017 negative
Blitz: Allocators should redeem immediately when a manager's passion deteriorates
“If you start to sense, boy, the mentality of the manager is changing or something about their strategy or something about their love for the business is kind of Changing for the worst. Even if they're going through a drawdown, you're still better off probably …”
Jul 17, 2017
Blitz: Evanston's best hedge fund investments rarely check every box perfectly
“Very, very few of our, you know, best investments have had every single box check absolutely perfectly, and in fact, some of our more mediocre initial investments have been the things that kind of check every box, but again, that spark wasn't necessarily there…”
Jul 17, 2017 neutral
Jul 17, 2017 negative
Blitz: Investors are poorly compensated for crowded, high-leverage strategies in illiquid markets
“And when you start combining highly leveraged strategies with strategies that are crowded, where people are looking at similar factors in a market that we still think is fairly illiquid, you know, in our view, those are risks that you're not particularly well,…”
Jul 17, 2017
Blitz: Evanston allocates nearly half its portfolio to long-short equity
“If you look across the firm, probably about, you know, close to half is in long-short equity, maybe 15 or so percent in macro, 20% event-driven and the remainder in relative value. Very little quantitative strategies and very little in the way of strategy that…”
Jul 17, 2017 neutral
Blitz: Quantitative risk models work in 98% of cases but miss tail events
“We have a framework we call our qualitative risk framework where effectively, you know, we think quantitative measures of risk work in 98% of the cases, but it's the two percent of the other cases that you really need to worry about.”
May 29, 2023 bullish
Blitz: Evanston prefers early-stage managers because principals are hungrier
“That often leads us to early stage managers who aren't managing a lot of money. The principals of the firm are hungry at that time, and there's not many good ones like that out there, but those are the ones we tend to prefer.”