Does anyone know of or have a list of ‘Austrian’ hedge funds, mutual funds or money managers? This question was posed in the “Austrians in Finance” group on linked in. So far this is what has been posted - I have not verified all of these yet. I think this is going to be a growing segment going forward as was evident from the last Mises financial markets event in Manhattan. Also, I noticed Doug French mentioned in that latest interview that a lot more Wall Street people are coming to Mises events.
This is from my list:
Jim Rogers
Marc Faber
Mark Spitznagel (at least according to his wikipedia page)
Bill Laggner and Kevin Duffy of Bearing Asset - see their recent article in Barrons; they also presented at the last Mises Financial Markets roundtable.
http://contrarianedge.com/ - not sure if this guy is actually “Austrian” but his research certainly seems to show it. Check out his great research on Japan and China.
I am trying to find who is behind “Accord Asset Management” as I came across their April 2010 update on scribd - good analysis that definitely smells of Austrian economics
Quotes from Others:
U.S. Global
Merk
Hussman
David Tice (of Federated Prudent Bear)
Eric Sprott
“Award winning Swedish hedge fund manager Brummer & Partners seem to be very Austrian oriented, at least as far as I can tell from my several meetings with the partners. I know at least one of them and was very excited by Atlas Shrugged, I remember. See http://brummer.se/ and you might translate with google because the English site seems to be reserved for clients. They have been around since early 90’s and with a great track record overall.”
"Spanish fund Bestinver follows a value investment and austrian approach. "
Howard S. Katz to an extent. Peter Schiff to an extent. Jim Willie C.B. to some extent. Everyone on goldseek.com seems to be warming up to AE recently as well. More and more people mention Mises, the ABCT, etc. Hard to tell who are the Johnnie-come-lately’s though. Besides Jim Rogers and Marc Faber who are both awesome, Katz is my favorite for investing, and Jim Willie is fun for analysis.
The “Austrians in Finance” group on linked-in is just that - it is a group to help connect people who work or are interested in the finance industry and subscribe to the Austrian School of Thought. This was one of the topics discussed among others. I also just saw a member of the group who said he just completed Bob Murphy’s Mises Academy course on the business cycle - so I think there are a lot of members who are already familiar with the Mises Institute in the group.
I personally see this segment gaining a lot of traction as people on Wall Street, money managers and other economists start to discover the Austrian School. I hope the Mises Institute continues to have events and roundtables dedicated to the financial markets and the Austrian economics.
Good question, and one I would expect has been asked before but one that probably will be debated for a long time. A few thoughts:
There are many “mainstream” or non-Austrian money managers who do well. Some are just lucky; others I think have a niche investment area where Austrian economics doesn’t really affect the outcome. Let me explain - let’s say you have a trader that specializes in trend following, or getting in on an up or down trend of the market or stock. They are looking at a lot of very technical indicators and may be trading in short time periods. The market is always moving on a day to day basis and their style is so focused, having an Austrian style approach (if you could take on one in such an instance) really isn’t going to affect their decisions.
Where I think it is more applicable is the money managers who must make investment decisions with longer-term horizons, especially those that have to predict how the economy for an entire country will fare and how various asset classes as a whole are going to fare. I know Austrian money managers these days are getting into emerging markets, commodities and precious metals and are fleeing paper.
I would imagine an empirical study could be done, but there are just so many variables. Anyone know of any such study?
I’m wondering that myself. Schiff has always appeared to be much more orthodox, (besting Bob Murphy on the real standing of the economy leading up to the collapse..see here and here). Not to mention he actually talks about the Austrian School and identifies as Austrian [1]…whereas neither Faber nor Rogers will come even close. The best I’ve heard is that Rogers said he was “sympathetic” to Austrian economics, or that he “doesn’t identify with any school of thought but would say he’s closest to that one”. And even that was hearsay.
So how about it…where are these assessments coming from?
I have been listening to Peter Schiff for awhile and he is very Austrian; unlike others he understands that war only destroys and that any policy that weakens the dollar is bad. I have also heard him explicitly say that is aligns the most to the Austrian School.
My only sticking point with him is that he constantly talks about how our trade deficit is a bad thing - I agree that to a point it is bad as we are not running a deficit for “good debt” but rather just for consumption - but at the same time it is the Chinese who are foolishly allowing us to do this as well. Along with this he goes on to talk about how we don’t make or produce anything anymore and that our service sector economy is phony. Again, I agree that a lot of our service sector probably is, but the market should decide if we are good at producing tangible “stuff” versus services. For example, it makes comparative advantage sense that we produce the intellectual capital for iPhones (the design, programming etc.) but not the actual hardware which is done in Asia.
Thanks, I’ve aIways thought that peter was austrian and was surprised to hear that questioned. I think he was an economic advisor to Ron Paul at some point too.
Just so you know, in a Podcast between Michael Pinto and Bob Murphy(pinto sitting in for schiff on his radio show), Murphy candidly and honorably backed down from this position on trade imbalances after further analysis of what happened in 2008. Who knew Bob Murphy could be wrong??
If you follow the links I provided above, you’ll see at least a bit of how that “Murphy contra Schiff” thing played out. (I have a ton more links on this saga if you want them). Murphy actually wrote multiple articles basically saying the deficit was no big deal, etc, and was actually a bit late to the crisis prediction party (at least by Austrian standards). As Triskal points out, Murphy has since admitted his error, not only to Pento but also to Schiff himself on Schiff’s show. He has also brought up (in his blog and even other articles) the embarrassment associated with some of those past pieces he wrote, considering how things have played out.
He has said how he “strayed from his roots” and wasn’t seeing clearly because he was blinded by the mainstream work/world he was working in at the time. (I can dig up these interviews if you want, I have them).
What’s even more interesting, if you read through the comments on those Murphy articles as they were being published, you’ll find quite a few mises.org readers were actually in complete disagreement with Murphy, some actually saying how they couldn’t believe LvMI would publish such rubbish.