Why Most Hedge Funds Fail but This One Didn’t with Dave Thomas
Money For the Rest of Us
J. David Stein
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dave Thomas, CIO and Founder of long/short hedge fund, Atalan Capital Partners, shares why most hedge funds fail and the keys to being a long-term successful investor.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Money for the rest of us. This is a personal finance show on money, how it works, how to |
| 0:04.9 | invest it, and how to live without worrying about it. I'm your host, David Stein, and today is episode |
| 0:10.1 | 534. It's titled, Why Most Hedge Funds Fail, but this one didn't, with Dave Thomas of Adelan |
| 0:17.0 | Capital Partners. Recently, UC Investments, the $190 billion manager of the University of California's |
| 0:25.1 | endowment and pension fund divested of all its hedge funds. As reported by the Financial Times, |
| 0:31.4 | UC Investment's chief investment officer, Jadip Bacher, said, hedge funds are a fantastic business if you're on Wall Street |
| 0:39.3 | and you can charge a great fee and then you can afford to buy all the art and the private jets |
| 0:44.7 | and the amazing houses in the world. For UC investments, they found hedge funds didn't protect |
| 0:51.0 | their portfolio during market dislocations in 1999, 2008, or 2020. |
| 0:57.2 | Botcher said the hedge funds exposed us to the opposite kind of risk, which meant they actually |
| 1:02.7 | hurt us. Our guest today, Dave Thomas, is the CIO and founder of his successful long-short hedge fund, |
| 1:11.9 | Adelon Capital Partners. |
| 1:18.9 | He mentioned some industry stats that show 70% of hedge funds fail in the first three years. In contrast, Adelan Capital Partners has been in business for over 10 years, and one reason is |
| 1:24.7 | their focus on longevity. They are obsessed with avoiding blowups and finding opportunity to add excess return. |
| 1:34.5 | Today's episode is a masterclass of not only how to run a successful hedge fund, |
| 1:39.5 | but how to be a successful long-term investor. |
| 1:43.1 | I hope you enjoy this conversation between F.EG's Greg Dalling |
| 1:47.4 | and Dave Thomas of Adelon Capital Partners. It was originally released on the FVG Insight Bridge |
| 1:54.1 | podcast, my former advisory firm's podcast. Before we get started with the interview, let me share some words from this |
| 2:02.2 | week's sponsor, Delete Me. Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data |
| 2:07.5 | online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. |
| 2:12.8 | I've been using Delete Me for a number of years now. They just sent me my latest personalized privacy report |
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