The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 11 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Seides: Smaller funds offer the best route to excess hedge fund returns
“The best way to do that was actually to invest in smaller funds because hedge funds inherently oftentimes are capacity constrained strategies.”
Seides: Return-focused seeders should avoid managers chosen only for short track records
“An allocator in the seat like protege was, where the investing was really driven by the investment returns on who the seed was, The middle manager who just had a good track record is the least useful. They may be the most useful in terms of short-term being ab…”
Seides: Protégé Partners spotted and entered the subprime short in 2006
“We had a view a few years before that the credit markets were quite rich. And we had been short some high yield, which paid off a little bit in 2008, but it wasn't a great risk reward and came across the subprime short, the subprime mortgage short in 2006.”
Seides: Small hedge funds lost their favorable supply and demand dynamics
“When I decided to leave protege, I really no longer believed we could deliver in the way we had in the past.
small hedge funds were at this sort of inflection of feeling like the supply and demand for capital was no, no longer in their favor.”
Seides: Protégé estimated an 85% probability of beating Buffett in 2008
“When we started the bet, My partners and I had said we thought we had, I don't remember what the number was, an 80 or 85% chance of winning, and you said you had a 60% chance of winning.”
Protégé Partners was the largest day-one investor in John Paulson's subprime fund
“The most obvious one that sticks out was protege was the largest day one investor in John Paulson's subprime fund.”
Protégé's seeded hedge funds merely matched its non-seeded fund returns
“The funds that protege seeded, you know, my time there had roughly the same returns as the funds that protege invested in that weren't seeded, and then you sort of had acquired this optionality for free.”
Seides admits his personal net worth is smaller than public assumes
“The public perception of what my
Personal balance sheet might be like is not what it really is, which is a really, at times is a very difficult thing personally when you say, wouldn't it be nice if I just had as much money as everyone else seems to think I hav…”
Seides: Early hedge fund founders lacked portfolio management training
“When protege started You didn't really have a lot of people that had experience as hedge fund portfolio managers, so oftentimes you'd have someone spinning out of a big hedge fund in quotes, then big probably, the largest were probably one billion dollars in a…”
Seides: Protégé Partners seeded about 40 hedge funds over 14 years
“In my 14 years at Protege, we seeded about 40 different hedge funds.”
Seides: Hedge funds dropped ~24% vs. S&P's 37% decline in 2008
“In 2008, the market, the S&P was down 37%. The hedge funds after Lehman, it was a big difference before and after, but after Lehman had a tough time, but were down, I don't remember the number, maybe it was 24%. This was the group of fund-to-funds.”