Hedge Fund Quotes & Sayings

really a hedge fund but a versatile technology laboratory full of innovators and talented engineers who could apply computer science to a variety of different problems.5 Investing was only the first — Brad Stone

Many hedge fund managers have become billionaires; perhaps this - plus their reputations as the smartest guys in the room - is why they have captured the investing public's imagination. — Barry Ritholtz

The competitive landscape of hedge funds is rapidly changing, as hundreds of funds are opened and closed every year. For example, Pensions & Investments reported that 784 new funds were started in 2009, while 1,023 existing funds were closed. Amazingly, the median life of a hedge fund is only 31 months. Fewer than 15 percent of hedge funds last longer than six years, and 60 percent of them disappear in less than three years.[3] — Gordon Murray

People think that the art market is about opportunists and hedge-fund managers getting broken art, but what really happened is that there was a new configuration of bourgeois values in the U.S. and an acceptance among the bourgeoisie of contemporary art as an idea. I think that bourgeois people are horrible. — Liam Gillick

What I want people to know is I went to Wall Street before the crash. I was the one saying you're going to wreck the economy because of these shenanigans with mortgages. I called to end the carried interest loophole that hedge fund managers enjoy. I proposed changes in CEO compensation. — Hillary Clinton

Over the last 30 odd years, Democrats have moved to the right and the right has moved into the mental hospital. So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby ... That's the Democrats. And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers and civil war re-enactors who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans and who actually worry that Obama is a socialist. Socialist? He's not even a liberal. — Bill Maher

I had come to Boyne City because I have always been drawn to nature's secrets more than to, say Hollywood's secrets or the secrets of Wall Street hedge-fund managers. Nature is real. It exists beyond our ability to create it or even mediate it. — Langdon Cook

I steeled myself. I would start from scratch. I would root out like weeds the effects of my parents, the tendency to choose safe options, to get ahead, to feel secure... and when I met other Asian Americans, those bound for consultant and hedge-fund jobs where they would make six figures, my judgment was harsh. Silently, through my narrowed eyes, I told them, I know you, and there's not too much to know. — Michelle Kuo

Hedge funds are not especially liquid. Many are 'gated' - meaning there are only small windows when you can withdraw your money. They typically have a high minimum investment and often require investors keep their money in the fund for at least one year. — Barry Ritholtz

In his tub-thumping speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Romney sounded like the hedge-fund tycoon he is. — Stephen Kinzer

Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into her private hedge fund. The Russians, the Saudis, the Chinese - all gave money to Bill And Hillary and got favourable treatment in return. — Donald Trump

There's something wrong when hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates than nurses or the truckers — Lindsey Graham

The hedge fund known as "Long Term Capital Management" collapsed last fall through overconfidence in its highly leveraged methods, despite I.Q.'s of its principals that must have averaged 160. Smart people aren't exempt from professional disasters from overconfidence. Often, they just run aground in the more difficult voyages they choose, relying on their self-appraisals that they have superior talents and methods. — Charlie Munger

Guys who can't get a job on Wall Street get a job at Moody's, as one Goldman Sachs trader-turned-hedge fund manager put it. — Michael Lewis

It defies reason to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. would march arm in arm with Wall Street hedge fund managers and members of ALEC to lead a struggle for the privatization of public education, the crippling of unions, and the establishment of for-profit schools. — Diane Ravitch

If competition for Kaggle's top talent becomes fierce enough among banks, insurance companies, hedge funds - we hope the world's best data scientists will earn more than $50 million per year, just like the world's best hedge fund managers. — Anthony Goldbloom

Here's what income and wealth inequality is about. Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers made more than 24 billion, enough to pay the salaries of 425,000 public school teachers. This level of inequality is neither moral or sustainable — Bernie Sanders

You're told that you're supposed to go to college, but you're also told that you are being self-indulgent if you actually want to get an education. As opposed to what? Going into consulting isn't self-indulgent? Going into finance isn't self-indulgent? Going into law, like most of the people who do, in order to make yourself rich, isn't self-indulgent? It's not okay to study history, because what good does that really do anyone, but it is okay to work for a hedge fund. It's selfish to pursue your passion, unless it's also going to make you a lot of money, in which case it isn't selfish at all. — William Deresiewicz

I think the idea that the hedge fund manager gets lower taxes than the taxi driver or the physics professor is insane. The legislators who leave that policy in place are derelict in their duties to be rational and fair. There are plenty of them in both political parties. It's totally outrageous. — Charlie Munger

He who smiles in a crisis; has finally found someone to blame. — Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager

I often point out to hedge fund proponents that their industry used to claim it was targeting absolute returns, with the promise that they'd make money over any reasonably long holding period and were uncorrelated with other major asset classes such as stocks or bonds. The 2008 crash showed how unattainable this was, and hedge fund proponents quietly adopted different descriptions of their objectives. These included generating attractive Relative Returns, and more recently when even this more modest objective proved to be beyond their collective ability the term Uncorrelated Returns gained favor. Since hedge funds have in recent years been worse than just about anything else it's been a good choice. — Simon A. Lack

Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; to the person fortunate enough to own a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension, and viable public transportation doesn't even compute. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare? — Mike Lofgren

Some people in the art world bemoan the hedge fund millionaires spending freely to acquire ostentatious displays of wealth and coolth for their giddily chic designer duplexes. Others bemoan art being treated as a commodity. But most of the bemoaning is because the art world is stuffed full of bemoaners, bemoaning about everything. — Charles Saatchi

We conclude that hedge funds are far riskier and provide much lower returns than is commonly supposed. — Burton Malkiel

I'm quite bullish. We're coming up on year 15 of a flat stock market. Historically that's a pretty good sign. So I'm not a hedge-fund manager but if I was I think I'd be feeling pretty good. — Marc Andreessen

Some hedge fund managers have made big bucks trading oil futures - George Soros is one. — Gary Weiss

I think the hedge-fund industry has taken a reputational turn for the worse, this dog-eat-dog stuff. I'm not just talking about Herbalife or J. C. Penney, but in other situations where the media really focuses on who's long and who's short. I don't think it's a good thing for the industry. — Bill Ackman

he thought a bit about God, and whether He might be some kind of universal digital computer, subject to the occasional bug or hack. Was it possible that politicians and hedge-fund operators were some kind of garbled cosmic computer code? That the Opponent, instead of having horns and a forked tail, was a fat bearded guy drinking Big Gulps and eating anchovy pizzas and writing viruses down in a hellish basement? That prayers weren't answered because Satan was running denial-of-service attacks? — John Sandford

The pushback I get is, 'He's a hedge fund guy.' Full stop. Some places, that can be a badge of honor. In others, it's almost a term of derision. — Edward Lampert

The population is angry, frustrated, bitter - and for good reasons. For the past generation, policies have been initiated that have led to an extremely sharp concentration of wealth in a tiny sector of the population. In fact, the wealth distribution is very heavily weighted by, literally, the top tenth of one percent of the population, a fraction so small that they're not even picked up on the census. You have to do statistical analysis just to detect them. And they have benefited enormously. This is mostly from the financial sector - hedge fund managers, CEOs of financial corporations, and so on. — Noam Chomsky

In America, we have subsidized private jets, big banks and hedge fund managers. Wouldn't it make more sense to subsidize kids? — Nicholas Kristof

As for another profession ... I suppose I'd manage a global-macro hedge fund. I love that kind of stuff. Weird, I know, but I find it fascinating. — Nicholas Sparks

Prosperity can't be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers. Democracy can't be just for billionaires and corporations. Prosperity and democracy are part of your basic bargain, too. — Hillary Clinton

I'd somehow managed to get an executive stuck in a tree. Instead of a saucer of milk and 'Here kitty, kitty, kitty,' someone might want to bring a hedge fund and a recording of George Bush promising 'No new taxes. — Michael Gurnow

He is one of the most prescient hedge fund managers on Wall Street, but his trades always seem to happen after the fact. That's because as soon as he executes an order, it is observed and preempted by traders at bigger firms with faster computers. The spread changes, and his buy order goes through just a few fractions of a penny higher than it should have. He is trading in the past, longing for the software and geeks he needs to get into his competitors' present. And his clients can no longer conceive of investing in a company's future, anyway; they want to win on the trade itself, as it actually happens. She's — Douglas Rushkoff

If you want better behavior from bankers, then make their financial incentives more like those in the hedge-fund world - where managers have 'skin in the game,' and their net worth is tied to their long-term performance. — David Ignatius

You've seen my statements; I do very well. I don't mind paying some taxes. The middle class is getting clobbered in this country. You know the middle class built this country, not the hedge fund guys, but I know people in hedge funds that pay almost nothing, and it's ridiculous, OK? — Donald Trump

It is intellectually dishonest to lump venture investors with hedge fund and buy-out investors. — Jose Ferreira

It's quite astonishing how much money people make in the hedge fund business and in the private equity field, and how well-off affluent families really are. — Kenneth Rogoff

A good salesman knows you better than you know yourself. If you are Chinese, they will sell you yield. If you're European, they will stroke your sense of superiority. If you're an ambitious manager of an American pension fund, sitting on piles of money but bound by rules and regulations, they will find a kosher way for you to become the big swinging dick you always knew you were. And if you are an American hedge fund - a serious fund, not two guys and a Bloomberg - a smart salesman cuts the bullshit and both of you reach an understanding. — Katya G. Cohen

The 1969 experience has been a rude awakening for many hedge-fund investors and has left some of them with strong reservations about the whole concept. For the first time in their relatively short history, the funds are not growing: in fact, some have suffered large withdrawals of capital, and a few have actually folded. — Carol Loomis

Private-equity and hedge-fund guys typically come into a situation of mediocrity, where rapid change may result in a profit. — Austin Ligon

Lion Capital also nominated one of its founding partners, Lyndon Lea, to American Apparel's board in place of another nominee, Gene Montesano, the founder of Lucky Brand Jeans, whose name the hedge fund is withdrawing. — Anonymous

The big advantage that we have as a venture capital firm over a hedge fund or a mutual fund is we have a 13-year lockup on our money. And so enterprise can go in and out of fashion four different times, and we can go and invest in one of these companies, and it's okay, because we can stay the course. — Marc Andreessen

A file-sharing service and a hedge fund are essentially the same things. In both cases, there's this idea that whoever has the biggest computer can analyze everyone else to their advantage and concentrate wealth and power. It's shrinking the overall economy. I think it's the mistake of our age. — Jaron Lanier

The Fed is the greatest hedge fund in history. — Warren Buffett

A hedge fund manager whose clients demand monthly performance reports has different needs than any individual investors with a 20-year time horizon. The needs of that long-term investor differ markedly from someone who is retiring in three years. — Barry Ritholtz

There was a Dana Phelps with a son named Brandon, but they didn't live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The Phelpses resided in a rather tony section of Greenwich, Connecticut. Brandon's father had been a big-time hedge fund manager. Beaucoup bucks. He died when he was forty-one. The obituary gave no cause of death. Kat looked for a charity - people often requested donations made to a heart disease or cancer or whatever cause - but there was nothing listed. — Harlan Coben

Insider trading by hedge funds has a long and distinguished history, dating to the days when people didn't know that there was such a thing as a hedge fund. — Gary Weiss

I like to take people you wouldn't really think people would write novels about: an aqueduct engineer, a code-breaker, a hedge-fund manager. It's in those sorts of lives that I find more fascination than in a CIA operative or a Marine or something like that. — Robert Harris

Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft. She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund - doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash. — Donald Trump

In February 2000, hedge-fund manager James J. Cramer proclaimed that Internet-related companies "are the only ones worth owning right now." These "winners of the new world," as he called them, "are the only ones that are going higher consistently in good days and bad. — Benjamin Graham

In baseball, you can hit 40 home runs on a single-A-league team and never get paid a thing. But in a hedge fund, you get paid on your batting average. So you go to the worst league you can find, where there's the least competition. — Julian Robertson

There used to be corporations that produced products. Now there are just banks that produce deals, hedge-fund-driven banks and derivatives and those things. — Cornel West

I've nothing against Goldman Sachs. But Goldman Sachs isn't an investment bank. Goldman Sachs is a hedge fund. It's bigger than any hedge fund. It's more leveraged, to the power of three or five, than any hedge fund. — Nouriel Roubini

Yet another hedge fund manager explained Icelandic banking to me this way: you have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that each is worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets. — Michael Lewis

The number-one job of the hedge-fund manager is not to make sure that you can retire with a smile on your face - it's for him to retire with a smile on his face. — Mark Cuban

If we're going to actually come up with robots that will do our laundry or tidy up the kitchen, we're going to have to make sure that whatever replaces capitalism is based on a far more egalitarian distribution of wealth and power - one that no longer contains either the super-rich or desperately poor people willing to do their housework. Only then will technology begin to be marshaled toward human needs. And this is the best reason to break free of the dead hand of the hedge fund managers and the CEOs - to free our fantasies from the screens in which such men have imprisoned them, to let our imaginations once again become a material force in human history. — David Graeber

Although the art world is frequently characterised as a classless scene where artists from lower-msddle-class backgrounds drink champagne with high-priced hedge-fund managers, scholarly curators, fashion designers and other "creatives," you'd be mistaken if you thought the world was egalitarian or democratic. Art is about experimenting with ideas, but it is also about excellence and exclusion. In a society where everyone is looking for a little distinction, it's an intoxicating combination. — Sarah Thornton

Today, you've got hedge fund billionaires aligned with Karl Rove, running ads against me to try to get Democrats to vote for you [Bernie Sanders]. I know this game. I'm going to stop this game. — Hillary Clinton

Hedge-fund managers make too much money relative to their social utility. I wish their rewards were a bit closer to those of, say, schoolteachers. — David Ignatius

Hedge fund managers charge so much more than mutual fund managers; alpha is even harder to come by. They end up selling a variety of things beyond mere outperformance. — Barry Ritholtz

There are a lot worse things you can do with all your bucks than giving them to even a mediocre mutual fund - such as, for example, giving them to a mediocre hedge fund. If supporting the lifestyle of a mediocre fund manager is your favorite charity, who am I to stop you? — Gary Weiss

The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, estimated that the hedge fund loophole cost the government over $6 billion a year - the cost of providing health care to three million children. Of that total, it said, almost $2 billion a year from the tax break went to just twenty-five individuals. — Jane Mayer

When people ask me what I do for a living, I generally tell them 'I run a hedge fund.' The majority give me a strange look, so I quickly add, 'I am a money manager.' When the strange look persists, as it often does, I correct it to simply, 'I'm an investor.' Everyone knows what that is. — David Einhorn

Everyone told me it was a really stupid idea to start my own hedge fund right out of business school,' says Ackman of the idea. 'That's how I knew that it was a good idea. — Maneet Ahuja

NEW YORK Climate change is likely to exact enormous costs on U.S. regional economies in the form of lost property, reduced industrial output and more deaths, according to a report backed by three men with vast business experience. The report, released Tuesday, is designed to persuade businesses to factor in the cost of climate change in their long-term decisions and to push for reductions in emissions blamed for heating the planet. It was commissioned by the Risky Business Project, which describes itself as nonpartisan and is chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Thomas F. Steyer, a former Bay Area hedge fund manager. — Anonymous

Art is a form of asset. Hedge-fund managers who have made money fast should diversify into other areas. — Michael Steinhardt

California is no longer a state, it's a hedge fund. — Craig T. Nelson

I don't like writing straight-up thrillers. I like writing about families hurled into crisis and danger - soccer moms and regular dads and husbands who might have to rescue their daughters or who are, say, hedge fund managers and have one foot on the sidelines watching their kids and the other in nefarious cover-ups and conspiracies. — Andrew Gross

Just because it's not hard science, just because it doesn't lead to a high-paying job at a hedge fund after college, doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing. — Kat Rosenfield

FreedomWorks, which is funded primarily by very rich people, solicits donations from non-rich conservative people. More than 80,000 people donated money to FreedomWorks in 2012, and it seems likely that only a small minority of those people were hedge fund millionaires. — Alex Pareene

Dozens of America's wealthiest taxpayers - including hedge fund legend Michael Steinhardt, super trial lawyer Guy Saperstein, and Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's fame - have appealed to President Obama not to renew the Bush tax cuts for anyone earning more than $1 million a year. — Joe Conason

Google the phrase "the most hated man in America." And this guy is one of the first people to pop up. Martin Shkreli, aka Pharma Bro, a 32-year-old drug company entrepreneur and former hedge fund manager who has a lot of money and loves to talk about how he spends it. — Joy-Ann Reid

If I had to sum up my practical skills, I would use one word: survival. And operating a hedge fund utilized my training in survival to the fullest. — George Soros