I had to track him down. “Do you know where he is now and what he was like?” I asked one of his former colleagues. “He was one weird dude. He used to have some odd website, which was all about him. Very strange indeed. I’ve no idea where he is now. The House of tall stories, I guess,” was the colleague’s response.
Five minutes later, I’d found pointy head. And it was in someone else’s house.
He told me that he’d already received a lot of stick for the article. I pointed out that he was probably about to get a lot more. The pointy-headed one then said that if I published his name and/or divulged where he was working, he’d get the sack. As readers well know by now, I’m all heart – I wouldn’t want to spoil his Christmas, so he remains anonymous.
What was interesting though was that despite me telling him he’d been naïve, he didn’t think he’d said anything outrageous. Good models, he maintained, were capable of metaphorically printing money.
And lo and behold I immediately came across another quant whose models are so successful that he can afford to spend over $1 million trying to get a no-hoper in the US presidential race heard in debates.
Greg Chase left his position at Bank of America in London in 2006 to set up Chase Capital Management. Now based in New Hampshire, 27-year-old Chase’s currency fund has apparently made a three-digit return this year and has an extremely high Sharpe ratio. Chase declined to talk about his fund’s performance, but he was more than willing to let the world know about why he is so supportive of Mike Gravel, a former Alaska senator campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Gravel was prevented from taking part in a debate televised by NBC because he had not raised $1 million in campaign contributions. Chase offered to buy $1 million-worth of advertising or give the TV channel the money. His offer was turned down and Chase is now fuming that cash has become a bar to democracy in the US.
When I spoke to Chase, he came across as a decent bloke. He’s clearly making waves and has various videos on YouTube: part one Interview with Gregory Chase, Mike Gravel with or without NBC, $25K Mike Gravel for President Video Contest.
In the last of these, he shows a couple of stacks of cash totalling $25,000, which he offers to the person who comes up with the best ‘Mike Gravel for president’ video. Chase also has his own blog.
For now, the day job seems to have taken a back seat. “I’m spending most of my time promoting senator Mike Gravel’s candidacy and some of his policies. He caught my attention in an earlier debate when the panel of eight Democratic candidates for president were asked what they would do to help reduce gasoline prices. Mike Gravel was the only candidate who said the US needs to get real and get off oil, and that it will take real sacrifice. He proposes seriously encouraging development and adoption of other technologies through a tax (whether its carbon, oil or gasoline doesn’t matter much to me), which I regard as an efficient solution, rather than subsidies, which I regard as the big-government solution,” Chase says.
He adds: “Two other major drivers of my support for Gravel are his plans to overhaul the tax code and to reduce military spending, and the nuclear arsenal in particular.” Depending on your view, Chase is either putting his wealth to good use or he is a young man with too much dosh in his hands.
