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Started my advisory firm


Ravi

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It took me 5 months but finally I was able to start my advisory firm. I am very excited that I am going to do what I love and at the same time I am thinking 5x more on every investment about the downside risk. Did everyone feel the same way or its my nerves. Even though I did not contribute my fair share to this board (I will try to do better), this has been very helpful and very insightful. If any one needs any help or have any questions in starting the advisory firm for Separately Managed accounts, feel free to drop an email, I will try my best to answer any questions.

 

P.S - If any one has suggestions/alternatives to Capital IQ, please let me know. I have not decided to buy this yet as it costs 25K per year 

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It took me 5 months but finally I was able to start my advisory firm. I am very excited that I am going to do what I love and at the same time I am thinking 5x more on every investment about the downside risk. Did everyone feel the same way or its my nerves. Even though I did not contribute my fair share to this board (I will try to do better), this has been very helpful and very insightful. If any one needs any help or have any questions in starting the advisory firm for Separately Managed accounts, feel free to drop an email, I will try my best to answer any questions.

 

P.S - If any one has suggestions/alternatives to Capital IQ, please let me know. I have not decided to buy this yet as it costs 25K per year 

 

Yes, the butterflies and excitement...yup!  One piece of advice...enjoy the process, don't kill yourself, don't be too hard on yourself and stick to your principles.  It's a marathon, not a sprint.  Cheers and congratulations! 

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P.S - If any one has suggestions/alternatives to Capital IQ, please let me know. I have not decided to buy this yet as it costs 25K per year 

 

The classic Bloomberg terminal still triumphs all in my experience. FactSet has a pretty UI and allows extensive customization but speed is lacking.

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Ravi,

 

For what it's worth: I've run a hedge fund for nearly twelve years on 3 newspaper subscriptions, an internet connection, and value line.  My experience suggests high priced bloomberg terminals or capital IQ are not necessary...  Perhaps they are well worth the cost to other managers, but I haven't found them necessary.

 

Good luck.

 

Allan

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Ravi,

 

For what it's worth: I've run a hedge fund for nearly twelve years on 3 newspaper subscriptions, an internet connection, and value line.  My experience suggests high priced bloomberg terminals or capital IQ are not necessary...  Perhaps they are well worth the cost to other managers, but I haven't found them necessary.

 

Good luck.

 

Allan

 

I would agree with that totally.  By the way, Allan has the best investment record I have seen for any fund manager in the last five years, so that should tell you something. 

 

And he doesn't spit out bravado or shots at others either.  He's got the discipline and the right character which makes all the difference in the world.  Cheers!

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I think I will stick to my traditional sources for now.  I am trying to focus as much as possible on the process so that the results take care of themselves. I do not have the website up yet, hopefully in the next 2-3 weeks. I can already tell you it is much easier to invest your own money vs. other people's money. It brings a huge sense of responsibility.  But I will try to stick to my framework, mental models and check lists and hopefully learn a few lessons on my way. Thanks a lot everyone for your good wishes.

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As a former HF manager and now just a putz who manages his own money, I'd like to echo that you don't need bloomberg or any fancy subscriptions.

 

I subscribe to WSJ and NYT and briefing.com.    That's it.  I use yahoo finance and sec.gov for my analysis.  I have a few friends who can occasionally send me a sell side report but most of the stocks I invest in have little to no coverage so it's irrelevant. 

 

I also think sell side coverage is overrated and I'd use an execution service that costs the least as possible, like interactive brokers.  Keep your costs down.

 

Good luck! 

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Thanks for the input. I did sign up for interactive brokers. Is there an advantage for signing up with briefings.com?

 

I use briefing for two things:

 

1)  It sends me an email anytime a company I own or watch reports news.  That alone is worth $40 or $50 a month. 

2)  I can browse the "in play" during the day and often get long term investment ideas from it.  For instance, last year I saw that MEDQ (now MEDH) was paying a large one time dividend and being acquired by its parent company and then subsequently doing an IPO.  I made a lot of money off of this information and I'd never have known about it if I didn't have the briefing news feed.

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Had a quick question for everyone...usually I use sec.gov for reading company filings..however, do u guys normally read it online or just print out the entire report ? As reading online for several hours at a go can be taxing for the eyes? On the other hand, printing out 10ks can be costly considering if one is examing  a large number of companies. Appreciate any kind input here.

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You can also use Google alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) to receive notifications about related news for a specific company or event etc.  Many times the alerts received are not instantaneous, though.

 

 

AOS, you might want to have a look at the large kindle DX, it's quite easy on the eyes although not that friendly to PDFs and lacking touch feature to easily mark text.  Amazon has another device coming up 4Q which looks quite promising (I'm holding off any e-reader/tablet purchase to see what they'll bring to the market).

 

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Personally, I couldn't imagine working without my Bloomberg Terminal. It reminds me of the Gertrude Stein Quote:  “I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich was better.”"

 

To me the largest advantage is the depth of information, being able to go back literally 30 years for News Releases and Filings and also with smaller market capitalization companies, being able to reach sellers swiftly and negotiate off the market blocks. For those that trade Canadian Juniors BAS and BASM are very useful tools as well.

 

Looking back to when I did not have a terminal, I was wasting a lot more time repeating tasks, no doubt about that.  My suggestion is that if you manage anymore than $10mm, you can afford a terminal, until then I agree that conserving costs is your number one priority as a manager.Also, the price for Capital IQ seems a bit high, we pay $1800 per month for our Bloomberg and that is for Bloomberg Anywhere which allows remote access. Another thing you should know, most funds with over $100mm in AUM get their bloomberg terminal subsidized from their prime brokers.

 

 

 

 

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Congrats and as others have said if you focus in a few places and don't try to cover everything you can work with VL and other US free sources like Edgar and co web sites.  Bloomberg and the other sources  (Capital IQ) are good if you want fixed income or foreign stock info or are cruching alot of numbers for general valuation/analysis purposes.  You do have to check the data from some of these sources with the source docs because in using them there are occasional errors. 

 

Packer

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Guest misterstockwell

Had a quick question for everyone...usually I use sec.gov for reading company filings..however, do u guys normally read it online or just print out the entire report ? As reading online for several hours at a go can be taxing for the eyes? On the other hand, printing out 10ks can be costly considering if one is examing  a large number of companies. Appreciate any kind input here.

 

Buy a bigger monitor with higher resolution and use some of the clear text features on newest browsers.

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