“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

- Albert Einstein.

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, .. shame on.. you. Fool me.. you can’t get fooled again.”

- President George W. Bush, Nashville, Tennessee, September 17, 2002.

Murkyweather Said To Shut F-U Hedge Fund After Losses (Update 2)

July 13th (Greenwich, Connecticut) – John F Murkyweather, who mildly dislocated global markets when his Ultra Conservative Long Run Defensive Cautious Fund blew up in 1998 two hours after launch, plans to shut his latest “relative value” hedge fund, F-U Capital Management Opportunity XVII, according to a person who has been approached to fund F-U Capital Management Opportunity XVIII. The fund is believed to be so-called because the manager has had a tendency to use relatives to value it.

F-U Capital Partners LLC is closing Opportunity XVII after losing 99.6% between Thursday early morning and Thursday late morning. Murkyweather, credited with generating several hundred thousand dollars worth of business for Greenwich Connecticut Porsche dealerships, returned an average of 0.003% a year with his new fund since opening in 1999. That compares with roughly 4.2% a year from a money market fund. Before fees, the Murkyweather funds generated approximately 643% per annum.

Ultra Conservative Long Run Defensive Cautious Fund, which assembled a team of top Wall Street traders (Sid and Doris Bonkers) but also some intelligent investors not motivated purely by personal greed, lost more than 98% of its $5.3 billion in assets in the three weeks following a decision by its Treasury team to shovel its extensive cash holdings into a giant incinerator. The “cash burning” strategy was widely credited to the firm’s Chief Former Goldman Alumnus, Dash F. Riprock, now US Treasury Secretary. The US Federal Reserve, now a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, subsequently orchestrated a $4.9 billion “bailout” whereby it took US government tax receipts and freshly printed dollars and redirected them into a dozen or so US banks that may or may not have been counterparties to the fund. The only requirement for the “bailout” was knowing someone who probably knew Dash.

F-U Capital Partners, based in Greenwich Connecticut, has so far launched 187 different hedge funds, of which 187 have failed after attracting billions from Swiss private banks but also from intelligent investors not motivated purely by personal greed. Murkyweather, now 23, did not return telephone calls but did later post envelopes apparently full of burning excrement to a variety of different journalists.
Jean-Pierre Paul-Henri Jérôme Euro-Trache, 19, who ran the F-U catering supplies operation (yoghurt sub-division) plans to start his own fund, according to a person who asked not to be named because he doesn’t actually exist. Euro-Trache registered F-U 2 Capital Partners (UK) LLP with the UK’s Financial Services Authority, according to the UK’s Yoghurt Promotion Council.

F-U Capital Partners relied on a technical strategy known as “Other People’s Money” to enhance its returns. The average leverage at the beginning of 1998 was about $16,000 for every $1 of partners’ capital, or in other words significantly less leverage than a typical commercial bank currently uses, even now.

When the New York Federal Reserve Bank organized its rescue of F-U Capital in 1998, its then chairman defended the bailout to Congress as necessary to prevent the seizing up of the Greenwich Connecticut Porsche dealership market. Indeed not just high performance car orders were potentially at stake, but dozens of largely fatuous tenancies of ridiculous high end properties were also jeopardized by the prospect of the fund’s failure. Critics said that the rescue extended a policy designed to protect financial firms that had “messianic delusions of adequacy” to include hedge funds. That opinion was later revised as protecting firms that had “messianic delusions of relevance”.

F-U XVII was more conservative than the original F-U. Market observers now believe that Murkyweather himself plans a new fund, tentatively titled F-U Time And Time Again. Murkyweather was forced to deny that he had plans to launch a “Low Cost” fund, later clarifying that he might consider an alternative “Locust” version instead. Before F-U’s first incarnation, Murkyweather and his team spent years engaged in pursuing models, but without success.

A number of high profile models subsequently sued for harassment. Their later investment strategy used high powered computers to make money from the relatively small differences in wealth between the firm’s investors and its partners. This approach, technically known as “arbitrage”, involved taking money from the investors’ bank accounts and transferring it into those of the general partners.

Murkyweather is closing F-U as the hedge fund industry recovers from its worst year on record. 1,400 hedge funds were closed last year, which is almost as much as the number of banks. Unlike failed banks, however, hedge funds other than F-U have not received a single penny by way of taxpayer support. Not that that is stopping European bureaucrats from attempting to regulate the few decent survivors into oblivion.

Editor’s note: The characters and incidents portrayed and the names herein are fictitious and any similarity to the name, character and history of any person or entity, living, dead or simply overrated, is entirely coincidental and unintentional. This article, like the fictional John F Murkyweather and the investors who tirelessly fund his ridiculous exploits, is a joke.

Regards,

Investment Team

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