Hedge funds: Should you bother?

Hedge funds have traditionally been a very rich man's game, but one broker is trying to bring the hedge fund experience to the medium rich.

Should anyone but the very rich bother with investing in hedge funds?

Wally Santana/AP/File

May 8, 2012

Should the "medium rich" bother with investing in hedge funds?  And if they do, should they go through a fund-of-funds so they can have the whole experience along with the returns (like overpaying for burnt coffee at Starbucks, for example)?

Jessica Pressler asks this question in a New York Magazine profile of a fund-of-funds macher, the article is making waves around the financial web as we speak...

“All the risks are in there,” Scaramucci says at Starbucks. “It’s not like we’re selling it to people off the street. You have to have a million dollars.” He’s still steamed up about the whole Felix Salmon thing. “He was trying to say I’m a snake-oil salesman, that I’m sleazy,” he says. “That sucks. I don’t view myself that way. We’re creating an experience.” He takes a slurp of his iced coffee. “There were scathing articles about Steve Jobs throughout his career,” he remembers. “A lot of people didn’t like Amelia Earhart flying an airplane or Hillary Clinton running for president. I’m going to have a SALT conference and television show and a book and a movie, and a this and a that, and people are going to be like, ‘Hey I want to be an investor in SkyBridge, they’re going to put me in the know.’ ” He shakes his cup.

Go read the piece when you get a chance, see which side of the debate you fall on...