Quantum Shift Sept 2007

Soros Goes Private as Golden Era of Rock Star Traders Ends With Dodd-Frank

July 26 (Bloomberg) -- Robert Slater, author of "Soros: The Unauthorized Biography, The Life, Times & Trading Secrets of the World's Greatest Investor," discusses billionaire George Soros's decision to return money to outside investors in his $25.5 billion firm. Slater speaks with Betty Liu and Jon Erlichman on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)

July 26 (Bloomberg) - Business writer Charles Morris talks about billionaire investor George Soros's investment strategy. Soros is returning money to outside investors in his $25.5 billion firm, ending a career as hedge-fund manager that spanned more than four decades. Morris speaks with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg)

Money can be dull. There are only so many denominations, and only so many ways to make it. What’s interesting are the people who risk it, and over the past four decades no one has made more of a spectacle of risk than George Soros , whose Quantum fund famously bet $10 billion that the Bank of England would be forced to devalue the pound. Soros earned $1 billion on that trade and incalculable legend points.

Now, Soros is going to stop risking other people’s money. By the end of this year, his Soros Fund Management LLC will have no outside customers for the first time in 42 years. The shift concludes a process that began in 2000, when Soros stopped accepting new investments, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Aug. 1 issue.

Four years later he turned management of the company over to his sons Robert and Jonathan. On July 26, after months of debate, the three men decided to return the less than $1 billion of outsiders’ money Quantum still oversees and convert the firm into a family office to manage almost $25 billion for George, his family, and foundations.

There’s a two-word explanation for closing what was once one of the world’s biggest hedge funds and consistently one of the best-performing --- with returns of about 30 percent annually in its first 30 years: Dodd-Frank. The law requires hedge funds to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and provide information about customers, employees and assets. By returning outsiders’ money, Soros Fund Management escapes that rule and the loss of privacy that goes with it.

“An unfortunate consequence of these new circumstances is that we will no longer be able to manage assets for anyone other than a family client as defined under the regulations,” the brothers wrote in a letter to investors.

A Quantum Shift - Earnest Parenting

I was contacted recently about a new site called QuantumShiftTv . In short, it’s a place where people taking action to improve society or the environment can get attention, support, inspiration, and encouragement. There is an ongoing video contest with a prize of $500 that is awarded monthly. Other awards are available for participating in site activities.

The biggest thing happening at QuantumShiftTV right now is the Be the Change! Share the Story! School Video Contest. The prize is worth $50,000 folks. Yep, you read that right. Fifty grand.

Unfortunately, the contest is not open to home schoolers unless they team up with a public or private school. The rules say that the school must be ‘government regulated’. Granted, that could be up to a bit of interpretation depending on the regulations of your state or territory (contest is valid in the US and Canada). I did mention that it would be nice for future contests to include and accommodate the home schooling community. My contact explained that they weren’t trying to exclude home schoolers, but the structure of the prizes obtained required awarding them in a particular way.

The prize is $10,000 cash to the school, another $15,000 in computer and other school material, and the choice of Organic Garden/Greenhouse, Skateboard Park, Playground, Jungle Gym or similar recreational/educational facilities for an approximate retail value of $25,000.

I’ve spent some time looking around the site, and it looks like the organization has a lot of promise. From what I can see, they’re pretty new on the scene. I like what I’ve seen so far.

If you’re a teacher or administrator in a school, be sure to check out the big contest. There are prizes available for grades k-6, 7-9, and 10-12.

For the rest of us, the monthly video contest still promises to be an exciting possibility.

Mathematical results in quantum mechanics, proceedings of the QMath10 Conference, Moieciu, Romania, 10-15 September 2007

Advances in quantum computation, representation theory, quantum field theory, category theory, mathematical physics, and quantum information theory, September 20-23, 2007, University of Texas at Tyler

Quantum probability and related topics, proceedings of the 28th conference CIMAT-Guanajuato, Mexico, 2-8 September 2007

Proceedings of the IEEE

The Patriot Act, issues and controversies