Will England - A Primer on Multi-Strategy Hedge Funds - [Invest Like the Best, EP.342]

My guest today is Will England, the CEO and Co-CIO of Walleye Capital. Walleye is a multi-strategy hedge fund headquartered in Minnesota that manages around $5 billion. Our conversation is a primer on multi-strategy hedge funds, which have become a force in markets through the success of firms like Millenium, Citadel, Point72, and Balyasny. We discuss the operational complexity behind the model, which managers best fit this type of investment style, and what happens in stress events like the Gamestop short squeeze in early 2021. We also talk about performance culture, the All Blacks, and Will’s experience as a US National Team rower. Please enjoy my conversation with Will England. Listen to Founders Podcast Founders Episode 311: James Cameron For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus, the modern research platform for leading investors. Stretch your research budget with flexible expert calls you can trust. At a fraction of the cost of traditional expert networks, Tegus customers pay only what an expert charges – with zero markups and no confusing call credits – netting an average 70% savings. Don’t want to conduct a full hour call? Tegus offers the ability to schedule 30-minutes, an offer you won’t find anywhere else. And they don’t stop there. With white-glove custom sourcing for every project and robust compliance measures, including a dedicated 50+ analyst team that vets every call transcript, Tegus ensures your privacy and protection. As the industry innovator for qualitative insights, Tegus helps you find the right experts you need at a quality and speed that can’t be matched. For a limited time, as a listener, you can trial Tegus for free by visiting tegus.co/patrick. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes (00:03:22) - (First question) - His fascination with Robber Barons (00:04:49) - He explains the style of investing he has built at Walleye Capital (00:08:51) - The importance of scale and what it means for firms like this (00:13:01) - A breakdown of the component parts of a 15% return structure (00:16:56) - His advice to new portfolio managers trying to succeed with long/short investments (00:21:23) - His reaction to an efficient market hypothesis (00:27:33) - He tells us what happens above the individual manager level (00:29:42) - The universe of talented people behind the business (00:35:26) - The backstory of Walleye Capital and why he chose Minnesota (00:42:37) - He discusses the felt experience of being at Walleye versus other firms (00:47:25) - Whether he identifies more as an entrepreneur systems builder or as an investor (00:50:04) - What he says about the half life of successful quantitative strategies (00:54:03) - A breakdown of style allocations and the percentage of managers within each (00:56:30) - How he determines how much leverage to use and how to be great at applying it (00:59:59) - How the firm handles tough investment periods (01:02:34) - How he knew Citadel wasn’t taking down gross during the GameStop short (01:03:51) - What he looks for when hiring a portfolio manager (01:06:37) - His philosophy on performance and how he blends that into his firms culture (01:09:21) - Inspiration he’s taken from the All Blacks team (01:11:25) - Addition aspects of the firm he believes are important (01:13:46) - Historical finance pioneers that inspire him (01:16:07) - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him