Ron Pollack: Fund Manager, Family Man, Friend. Ron Pollack: He's Back, More Extraordinary Achievements to Come. Ron Pollack: Mastering Hedge Funds, Ch
Ron Pollack: Fund Manager, Family Man, Friend
Were you to pass him on a sidewalk you would never imagine this same man once established among the biggest hedge funds in America, topping out at in excess of a billion dollars. Casually dressed in shorts and t-shirt, Ron Pollack ( http://www.ronpollack.net ) discussed his time managing hedge funds and short selling, as well as his family, charitable organizations he has volunteered with, and finally the reason he determined to return to managing funds following a six-year break. "Short selling is what I do and I need to get back to doing it."
Ron Pollack is an alumni of Yale (Magna Cum Laude) and earned a M.B.A and J.D. from Harvard. After grad school, Pollack turned to stocks where he joined the ranks of many of his classmates in investment banking and fine tuning his skill as a hedge fund manager. Ron first learned short selling from the Feshbach Brothers.
Many successful investors have attended Yale or Harvard. They include Jim Chanos (who exposed Enron, and who Ron met in the 1980s when they were short First Executive Life), Zoe Cruz (the commodity trader who ended up as a co-president of Morgan Stanley, she was at HBS with Ron), Jamie Dinan (CEO of JP Morgan Chase, Ron was in his pick-up basketball group at HBS), Strauss Zelnick (media prodigy and Chairman of ZelnickMedia as well as Take-Two Interactive, as he was Ron's roommate at Harvard), Scott Schoen and Scott Sperling (presidents of leveraged buyout firm THL, and friends Ron met at Harvard), Steve Pagliuca and John Bekenstein (from Bain Capital, Ron met Steve while at HBS and John at Yale), Glenn Hutchins (from Silverlake Partners, met in a class at Harvard). Pollack is no different. He graduated from both Yale and Harvard. He left Feshbach during the first half of the 1990s, and built a well respected group of hedge funds. By 2002, Pollack's priorities had shifted. He wanted to focus more on his family and doing philanthropic work.
"After the terrorist attack on 9/11," Pollack said, "I was moved by what had happened and I really wanted to help." The financial markets went into turmoil, and stayed that way, in the months following the attack. Ron felt pulled between his family and his investment business. In November, Ron was on vacation with his three children and his pregnant wife, sitting in a hotel room with his laptop watching the markets. The markets were just crazy and he realized that he had to get back to the office.
On his way back, he began working on a course of action which would increase his ability to spend time with his family along with helping charity groups. Ron combined his hedge fund company with the Cambridge, MA based Monitor Group in 2002 so that he would be able to spend time on extracurricular activities, especially volunteering and raising his kids. Next he succeeded in establishing fund-raising efforts for ailing firefighters, cops and other New York city workers along with the Vail Valley Foundation, NY Rescue Workers Detoxification Foundation among other charitable groups.
In his fund-raising role, he sometimes found himself visiting fund managers. Whenever this happened, he became somewhat torn because he had quit trading and he missed being involved. In all the time he served as a volunteer, Pollack actually made only a single trade.
{{{At a charity auction in Vail, Pollack had bid for a day of trading and instruction with a local stockbroker, "just for fun." Little did this broker know who had won the bid. Needless to say, he was shocked to find out the depth of knowledge that his visitor had. Within the first 15 minutes, Pollack had completed a successful short sale and knew that he "still had it."|At a charity auction in Vail, Colorado, Pollack, out of humor, was found bidding on a day of trading and instruction from a local stock broker. The broker had no idea who had won the bid. Soon after, he was shocked to find out the vast knowledge and experience his visitor had. Within a short while, Pollack had once again done a successful short sale and knew he was still "the man"|For a bit of personal entertainment, Pollack treated himself to a day of 'personal training' and trading with a local stockbroker, which he won at a charity auction in Vail. It was a major surprise for this stockbroker when he discovered who his trainee was going to be and even more of a surprise when he realized quite how much Ron knew about the markets. It took Pollack just 15 minutes to triumph and a successful short sale trade. He then knew that he had not lost his touch.|While at a charity auction, Pollack jokingly bid on a day
