Margin Call, or Jo Nova, Wanna Be Hedge Fund Manager

Jo Ann Nova, David Evans and a guy by the name of Chris Dawson, CEO of the Lord Monckton Foundation are asking for donations to establish a something or other, in which said something or other will do something in some undisclosed way to slay the sky dragons.

Chris Dawson is cagey about what the something or other will be except it will be a hedge fund, whatever that is, and everybunny knows that hedge funds are the key to riches and have special tools and by the way climate change is a crock and the hedge fund of Jo Ann's dreams will . .

. . . short-selling overvalued renewables stocks, and doing other things that profit from cooler weather or collapsing subsidies — but which fund could you invest in to manage that? It’s a niche crying out to be filled. David and I liked this idea so much when we were approached by Chris Dawson two years ago, we got involved in developing Cool Futures (and obviously stand to benefit if this comes together, see the Disclosure at the end). Cool Futures could change the game in so many ways.

. . . . With a self funded, highly profitable due diligence process and cost benefit analysis on the science, economics and finance of climate change, we will literally hedge our bets on climate change and on changing climate change policy.

The Weasel has expressed a few words of derision,

Bored with force X from outer space? Was Force F just too fuckwitted, and part 22 just too dull? Then why not play “hedge funds”? Hedge funds do lots of complex maths and make lots of money (only not so much recently); they also have the advantage of being opaque. So play today, with Jo Nova and her band of performing marsupials. Yes, I know, its a picture of a monkey with an arrow up it’s bum, and a monkey is not a marsupial. But no known mediaeval manuscripts feature marsupials.

Context, context: I forget the context in my obsession with primate posteriors. coolfuturesfundsmanagement is, like, a hedge fund. Run by Jo Nova! And some others. Or perhaps better, a wannabe hedge fund with a severe shortage of moolah. And its going to hedge against cooling, maan. Tagline: “Are we preparing for catastrophic warming when we should be preparing for cooling?”

It's hard figuring out exactly what this "fund" is going to do except raise money to figure out what they are going to do and indeed Chris Dawson is pretty cagey about this because it would be dangerous to actually say that they are raising money for a hedge fund because investment in hedge funds are limited to a qualified (e.g. very rich) people who know what they are doing and can afford to lose their money.  Minimum US qualifications are a net worth of a million, and income of over $200K in the past two years, and oh yes, prospects of making that or more into the future.

But no, there is no such hedge fund, but the ask is for money to "set up" such a hedge fund which will then go seek investors. And, of course, since it will be housed on one of the Caribbean islands well known for housing tax evasion schemes, Eli assumes that the incorporation papers will be drawn up by Mossack Fonseca. Of course, hedge funds being inherently risky this becomes a lot like asking rich people to contribute mega dollars to Donald Trump so he can rip them off.

But wait, why the Cayman's or similar to house this "hedge fund"  Well, guess what, there are no limits on who is a qualified investor in a Cayman "hedge fund", unlike the US where you have to have a minimum of a million net worth and an income of $200K.  Given this and a good guess at how much the net worth and income of the inhabitants over at Nova's offered this kinky opportunity.  Now some, not Eli to be sure.

ATTP points out that, well, the facts assumed are taken from a rather tall cherry tree, but the grifters have already scored over 42K$ US.   This gave rise to a hilarious (well Eli is easily amused, how else do you think he has made it to a ripe old age) series of tweets, starting with

@theresphysics hedge fund run by people that don't grasp the difference between gross and net - what could go wrong? pic.twitter.com/U2eJVQtNMI

— Gavin Cawley (@Gavin_Cawley) June 21, 2016

upon which Paul, just Paul borrowed the Pielke humphing apparatus and replied

@Gavin_Cawley @theresphysics that isn't an answer to my question. You mocked "hedge fund managers who don't know net/gross".

— Paul (@PaulDroop) June 21, 2016

and it goes neener neener for a while as twitter is won't, but, the answer is simple, these clowns are not hedge fund managers, they are hedge fund manager wanna bees. 

A bunny wanting to flush their hard earned dollars down the toilet would do better giving directly.