Interestingly, Spiegel doesn't disclose the range of assets in his so-called "hedge fund".
Given that he seems to have lost money nearly every year, I'm thinking it's substantially below the amount initially invested.
The weird part is that he's been managing to attract fresh money.
From SEC reports, his "total amount sold":
$2.8 million by July 2012 (from Arizona and NY, 10 investors)
$3.042 million by August 2013 (from NY, 11 investors)
$4.492 million by August 2014 (18 investors)
$4.532559 million by July 2015 (same investors... someone topped him up)
$6.282559 million in July 2017 (20 investors)
$6.682559 million in July 2018 (21 investors)
Sooo. Digging out his official publications and statements to the press, he was
-- did not disclose returns in 2012 AFAICT
-- supposedly up 56% in 2013
-- did not disclose returns in 2014 AFAICT
-- down 11.1% in 2015
-- up 31% in 2016 (due to other stocks, not to his TSLA short), which was apparently the "high water mark"
-- down 12.4% in 2017
-- down 15.5% YTD in 2018 October.
It's not clear how much money he lost in 2012 and 2014, though we know he shorted into the gigantic 2013 TSLA rally, starting at $90, and was massively short TSLA starting in early 2014. He says he shorted in the mid-$200s (so near the 2014 peak), and although he could have been ahead at the end of 2014, he says he wasn't (maybe due to borrowing fees?)
If we assume that he somehow managed to run flat in 2012 and 2014 (I'm assuming the Aug 2013 money came in after the 2013 gains), we can calculate that he would have had about 4.6 million in early 2016, about 7.2 million in early 2017 (mostly due to some return-chasing fool injecting 1.75 million in), and about $5.7 million now. This could be off because I don't have any records for his earlier performance; I'd actually guess he has less than that.
Anyway, there are quite a lot of individuals on this forum managing more money than that and doing far better. It's truly interesting that Spiegel's managed to self-promote enough to actually get on news shows and get interviewed by the WSJ, because he's got zero credibility.
I feel sorry for anyone who put money into Spiegel's so-called "hedge fund" under the mistaken belief that they were investing -- though I do suspect that some were just using him to manipulate the media and wrote off the injections of funds as a marketing expenses.
Anyway, that was a completely pointless thing to look up, but when I realized Spiegel was "declining to disclose" his assets under management, I started getting curious and decided to try to figure it out.
His funniest statement is from early on when he says he'll limit the size of the fund to $50 million. Talk about irrational optimism.
