Keith McCullough unfiltered is like drinking from a firehose of ideas. Just take a look at the morning notes the head of Hedgeye Risk Management LLP types up, before dawn, to send to his clients: "Hearing politicians talk about markets is like watching a southern belle try to ice-fish." With the help of Rich Blake, a former magazine writer, he has turned his sometimes stream-of-consciousness critiques into a solid read.
Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager is, on the surface, a biography, chronicling McCullough's trip from the rinks of Thunder Bay to the hedge funds of Manhattan to iconoclastic market commentator. But more than that, it's a look inside the sometimes nauseating sausage factory that is Wall Street. Given that what the banks there produced poisoned the global economy, it's worth a look.
If the name Keith McCullough sounds at all familiar to Canadians, it's more likely because he and some of his partners are in the midst of bidding for the Phoenix Coyotes of the National Hockey League. This book is the story of how he ended up in a position to do that.
McCullough's narrative traces his career as a mucker in the corners of Ontario's junior hockey leagues, to Yale University to play hockey, to Wall Street. It's the mucker's ethic - get up earlier, work harder, dig further - that helps him to the top of the food chain in the mid-2000s: hedge-fund portfolio manager. It was the only job title in the United States that enabled thirtysomethings to pull in paycheques topping nine figures. It didn't last.
While he was right about the coming crash, McCullough laid his bearish bets too early. Let go by Carlyle-Blue Wave Partners, the giant fund company that had just recruited him with the lure of riches, he started his own research firm so he could share what he really thinks about the financial world.
It's not always pretty, but it is refreshing.