The Lemon Fool

Fat boy Crispin Odey delivers more odious news. Despite his fund falling over 40% he has the nerve to put his head above the parapet and call for a 80% drop in the FTSE index. Why do these people make such calls? I can see the rational for predicting a 10% or 20% fall given the uncertainty and over valuation of the FTSE, but 80%.

The full story here, but only for the brave:

http://citywire.co.uk/money/crispin-odey-warns-ftse-100-could-crash-80/a964875?re=43050&ea=215259&utm_source=BulkEmail_Money_Weekly&utm_medium=BulkEmail_Money_Weekly&utm_campaign=BulkEmail_Money_Weekly

alarmbells wrote:Fat boy Crispin Odey delivers more odious news. Despite his fund falling over 40% he has the nerve to put his head above the parapet and call for a 80% drop in the FTSE index. Why do these people make such calls? I can see the rational for predicting a 10% or 20% fall given the uncertainty and over valuation of the FTSE, but 80%.

The full story here, but only for the brave:

http://citywire.co.uk/money/crispin-odey-warns-ftse-100-could-crash-80/a964875?re=43050&ea=215259&utm_source=BulkEmail_Money_Weekly&utm_medium=BulkEmail_Money_Weekly&utm_campaign=BulkEmail_Money_Weekly

A stopped clock is right twice a day. If you make outrageous calls and are proved right then you can make a large fortune on the book/speech/television appearance/people flooding to your fund trail.

All IMHO and of course this may not be Mr Odey's modus operandi.

alarmbells wrote:Despite his fund falling over 40% he has the nerve to put his head above the parapet and call for a 80% drop in the FTSE index.

To be fair to Fatty Odey that's Not What he's Saying: -

- His AUM (Assets Under Management) are down 40% which has no relationship to the actual performance of his funds. Institutional Investors, for example, may be forced to withdraw funds from a perfectly well performing fund for a variety of reasons.

- He's not calling for an 80% drop. He's saying that years of QE and with the fall in Sterling some stocks are on very Very strange metrics and that if they fell by an extreme amount they may still not be considered "Cheap" by some conventional long term benchmarks.

........is my interpretation anyway!

His fund did go down by over 40%. You are right about the 80% comment, though.

The average life span of a hedge fund is 5 years.

A fund manager creates one on a rising tide of speculation, lines his pockets e.g. 2% of assets under management and 20% of profits, and then makes a wrong bet with borrowed cash - bringing the whole edifice down to earth. The manager never returns his ill-gotten gains and in the blink of an eye creates a second fund on another speculative fad.

Why anyone would trust their savings with such people is beyond me.