An American Hedge Fund - a 5 minute review
As you, my regular readers know, I have a soft spot for self-published authors, and when I find an autographed advance copy of “An American Hedge Fund” written by Timothy Sykes and self-published under the “Bull Ship Press” imprint, you know I’m going to take off with it and tear through it on a lazy Saturday morning.
Tim Sykes tells his own story of how he starts off with just over $12,000 and during his years at collage turns it into over $800,000. Read the book to find out the details of how he does it. After he leaves college he creates the “Cilantro Fund” and starts looking for investors to invest in his shiny new hedge fund.
The book doesn’t go into great detail about exactly what hedge funds are, so let’s talk about that for a minute. A hedge fund is generally a limited partnership which is formed to allow investors to become limited partners with the fund manager (or an LLC formed by the manager) as the general partner. The LP is used as an investment vehicle and the gains and losses of the fund are passed directly through to the investors after the fees. Generally the manager takes a 2% management fee, and 20% off the top of all profits.
This elaborate structure is set up to avoid having to deal with the SEC and bypass the restrictions that other money management structures, such as mutual funds, have to deal with. There is a catch. Only “Accredited Investors” can invest, you can’t advertise, and before an investor can invest you need to have a pre-existing relationship (of at least six months).
Many of the established hedge funds manage well over $100 million, have a two to five year track record and a 50+ person staff, so finding accredited investors is difficult. For the Cilantro Fund and their comparatively tiny $1.1 million, finding investors and fighting to stay afloat became a substantial challenge. The second half of the book describes the downward spiral in detail.
While many of the other reviews of “An American Hedge Fund” call the book “inspirational”, I am going to go with “spirited” as by the end of the book I was more exhausted than inspired. The book is a great read, and takes you through the ups and downs of a small player in an industry where the deck is stacked in favor of the Goliaths.
Since writing the book, Timothy Sykes has closed his hedge fund and started a website which is dedicated to inform the public and cut through the secrecy that has shrouded the hedge fund industry.
If you’re interested in Hedge Funds check out this article on what a hedge fund is.
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Tim,
It is not your LOSING MONEY but it your LOSING HEART that makes me wonder if you ARE A MAN AT ALL…
Almost every good/great trader had big losses and came back. BUT YOU SIR simply RAN away and are TRYING to FIND another profession..
that’s SIGN OF A LOSER..
If your story had shown even a slight iota of grit in you it might have been worth read.
But You are just another loser..Many people make a fortune in markets.
and as they say Markets GIVE and take back with same ferocity…
I just hope you have a better luck as a writer (which btw doesn’t look like happening as of now)
The above comment has been posted to several other blogs which reviewed this book. This makes me think that the person is spamming blogs because he has a bone to pick with Tim rather than actually commenting on the reviews.
While I’m on the topic of writing, I would like to introduce our friend AJ to a part of speech commonly known as an “article”. “Articles” can be used the following ways:
that’s _a_ SIGN OF A LOSER
it might have been worth _a_ read
Many people make a fortune in _the_ markets
with _the_ same ferocity
I tried to fix “which btw doesn’t look like happening as of now” but I can’t make it sound right regardless of what I do.
Good luck with your writing - you certainly need it ;).
I read Sykes mediocre hedge fund book since I knew him at Tulane, and like him as a person. However, the book is an empty and uninspiring story about how Sykes became a self-absorbed irresponsible stock trader. This book is NOT a “classic” and story is NOT “Rocky-like”(as author Sykes claims). This book is basically like a blog of an average person who got lucky trading stocks and then his luck ran out (which it really should be - blog and nothing more).
Beware of all the phony glowing reviews for Sykes Book. Its the good ole boy network in high gear where authors/investment advisers use the buddy system to give fake good reviews to each other.
Sykes put the term “stock operator” in title in order to confuse all future book searches for Jesse Livermore’s excellent story (Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, by Edwin Lefèvre (1923)). This cheesy trick might help book sales, but needless to say, Sykes has nothing in common with the great trader Livermore.
Sykes comes across like a hyper/immature/video game player-type Trader, which worked for him for a few years; then the law of averages caught up with him. His “return to the mean” continues during the past two years; and his very poor investment strategies are DOWN -37% since Jan 2006. His continuous bad performance throughout 2007 shows that he does not learn from his mistakes; and readers can only cringe while watching Sykes slow motion demise.
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If you consistently beat the market, you will face endless questions about whether or not you are a fraud.
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Focus on trading first; never schedule investor meetings during market hours.
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Re: Sykes amateurish hedge fund book:
Is it more sad or amusing when someone’s young ego spurs them to write a book when they possess neither literary skill nor talent? Sykes has commented elsewhere that his goal to become “a great teacher, not a great investor” but in this sad excuse for a tutorial he proves to be neither as his amateurish errors practically drive him from the market, credibility (what little he had) completely shredded. Perhaps, however, it’s not truly his fault: let’s face it, when it comes to imparting wisdom from Wall Street it is simply not possible that a raw twenty-something simply has much to say.
Not that Sykes doesn’t try however. In perusing the “comments” portion of Amazon book reviews, he’s certainly not reluctant to chime in and offer a defense at nearly every turn. Find me ONE other author at Amazon that feels so compelled to argue his own incompetence.
Tim Sykes should end his determined quest to become a media personality as his grating manner and decidedly non-telegenic looks suit him far better to shine shoes.