Richard, I don't know of any resources for setting up a hedge fund. When I ran hedge fund money, it was already set up as a shell before I was hired and the family I worked for took care of all the legal stuff.
My partnership is a simple piece of paper agreement. In truth, I probably couldn't even enforce my fee payment in court, but, then, if they didn't pay me, they wouldn't make the money next year. <g> What I really have is a brokerage firm power of attorney form that allows me to trade the money in the account. Since my partners are big wheels at the firm that holds the capital, they are probably better protected than I am.
Another possibility is a Managed Future Account, and there are all sorts of resources available on that one. Given my palladium and platinum plays in the recent past, I should have had them accounted for in an MFA and the performance would have been very marketable. The problem with MFAs, in general, is that traders make a huge amount of money in the year they use their own cash, but the same trick doesn't work as soon as they bring in investors. The investors try to nail down exactly how the manager will run the money, and that, of course, makes him inflexible for the changing market. I have a buddy who was a mutual fund manager at another firm when I was running funds (in fact, I had three offers for jobs when I opted for American Capital and Jim eventually took the position in New York that I declined) and he is now an MFA. I'll have to check in with him to see how he's doing. |
