Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The Day a Bartender Gave Me His Uniform (I'm still not sure why) and Oh yeah, Here's an Incredible Hedge Fund You Can Start and Make Billions

By James Altucher


I needed some money and all of my current plans were not working out. First off, I was running a hedge fund. But my fund was really a “fund of hedge funds”. In other words, I invested in other people’s funds.

Which, when you think about, is really a stupid idea. First off, the 12 funds I was invested in were charging me fees and they would “lock up” my money for a year (i.e. I couldn’t take the money out for at least one year and even then there were penalties and conditions). Then, I had to turn around and charge fees to my investors and lock them up.

It was really a clusterfuck, pardon my language.



So I tried to sell it. And I had a buyer. A bank. They offered me a nice amount BUT they had one condition: I had to sign a six year employment agreement. And, if during those six years I ever quit OR if they ever fired me, I had to return all the money and they could still keep the fund. What a bad idea. I was almost crying when I read the agreement because I thought we had a good thing going on. My lawyer even said, “I thought slavery was outlawed”.

I did what I always do then. I stopped returning their calls. They kept calling me every day. Ten times a day, “We can negotiate. Call us back.” But sometimes when things are so far apart and someone is clearly trying to pull something over on you then there’s no sense in calling them back. They ended up going out of business anyway. Good riddance. I was staying at the Chelsea Hotel the day I got the contract and I remember my business partner, Dan, telling me we can’t take this deal. I was still willing to take it. I ended up drinking myself to death in the bar next door, El Quijote. They had to revive me and carry me up to my room at the end of the night. The next day, the bartender, who couldn’t even speak English, gave me his uniform he wore the day before. He said, “Here. I owe you.” I took it but he couldn’t explain why.

But I still needed money. I pitched a major $10 billion hedge fund on an idea I had. Here’s the idea:

Read the rest here.


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