By Irwin Speizer
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Patrick Welton (second from right): Growing is a process rather than a target. Photographs by Lisa Wiseman |
When Patrick Welton decided to give up his medical practice a few years ago to focus on his side business as a hedge fund manager, he envisioned institutional investors, wowed by his methods and rigorous business management style, committing billions in assets to his firm. His aggressive courting of pension funds and other institutional investors paid off handsomely as his assets under management nearly doubled in 2011 to about $1.1 billion.
Yet those new assets arrived just as his managed-futures strategy sank into negative territory. The Welton Global Directional Portfolio (GDP), which holds nearly all of Welton Investment Corp. assets under management, was down 13.38 percent for the first ten months of 2011. Buffeted by an unexpectedly sharp drop in commodity prices and by wild daily swings...