CorpusColossus

The Month I Ran My Hedge Fund from the Local Chase Bank After Enron went bankrupt in 2001, I decided to start a hedge fund. Until then, I’d spent my entire career at a large company, trading off its balance sheet. I knew how to trade, but knew little about the logistics of launching and running a fund. Plus I had no peers in Houston who could help guide me through the process. I found out-of-town legal help. My clearing broker was a NY investment bank, Smith Barney. I knew I needed two bank accounts: one for the business to pay rent, salaries, etc and one for the investor money that supported the trades. I figured, incorrectly it turned out, that I could stay local for the latter. I figured I needed a national, sophisticated bank so I went to my closest Chase branch and asked to open a business account. They were very accommodating and asked some basic questions. Suffice it to say, they were as new to hedge fund finances as I was. But they were happy to have the new accounts, especially since one would be funded with a 6-figure deposit and the other would eventually be funded with millions. In the spring of 2002, I opened the first account. I used it to pay for normal business expenses: rent, office equipment, legal fees, etc. All was fine. In August, I called my external investors and told them to send their funds to join my personal investment in the fund to the second Chase account, the limited partnership account. They did. Chase confirmed they received the funds and had no problem. Quick aside, energy trades in 2002 could be done on an exchange or over-the-counter directly with a counterparty. Most trades could be executed on exchange and be relatively capital efficient but some instruments only traded directly with counterparties. Today, exchanges clear almost any nat gas product one would want to trade but it was less so back then. I had friends at another trading house, Sempra, who fast-tracked a credit arrangement for me to trade OTC there. I would have to post cash as margin to support my trades given I was not a so-called “credit-worthy counterparty,” but it was fine. I wasn’t planning on taking large net positions given my small capital base, though sometimes I might be long on the exchanges and short to Sempra, or vice versa. I would need to post initial margin and maintenance margin both at my clearing broker and with any direct counterparty to account for the daily price swings at both places. This meant I would have to move money between my prime broker, where I kept my exchange trades, and Sempra, several times a week. The second week of August I started trading. The first thing I needed to do was send more than half of the LP account funds to my prime broker, where most of my trades would be. The neighborhood Chase branch executed this wire with no problem. Trading at first was small. The second week I did my first trade with Sempra. I had to post margin with them. Chase executed that wire with no problem. By the third week my trades were picking up. I ended up long with Sempra and short on the exchanges. When the market went up, I had a surplus at Sempra and would ask them to send me those funds, as the credit agreement allowed to me to do. I needed that money to cover the offsetting exchange losses. Very quickly I was moving hundreds of thousands through my local Chase branch several times a week. Red flags quickly went off at the bank. Suffice it to say, I had not prepared them for this level of activity. The following week the market fell. I needed to send money to Sempra hundreds of thousands of dollars. I told my prime broker to send some of my account surplus there to Chase, and asked Chase to send some of that to Sempra. That’s when my 4 week old hedge fund was hit by an almost fatal blow. Chase accepted the wire from Smith Barney, but I found out the next day that they did not send the wire out. Sempra was calling to ask where the margin money was. I didn’t know. I called Chase and they told me there was a hold on it but it would go out later that day. I checked in the late afternoon. It had not gone out. I was at the bank went it opened the next morning. I explained how I needed this wire to go out. The account had been frozen, they said, until they got a green light from their compliance department. They didn’t properly “know your customer” and froze my account until they could understand what was going on. This level of activity out of a new account of this size was not something this branch had ever seen before. Nor did they understand an energy hedge fund with over-the-counter trades. I was furious they had not explained this the previous day and asked them to just send out this one wire and then we’d sort it out. I’d move to another bank asap. They declined. I pleaded, just send this one. It wasn’t working. I panicked. I had failed to meet my Sempra margin call. They could close my trades. I called Sempra from the bank, explained the issue, and convinced them to give me a 24-hour grace period. But if I didn’t meet my cash call by the next business day, they would close my trades. Then I would be imbalanced on the market with my just my short trades on the exchange. With a sharp market move in the wrong direction, my little hedge fund would have been toast within a month of opening. Throughout this, normal bank customers were flowing in/out of the bank. I told them I wasn’t leaving the bank branch until they sent the wire. It was my money. I started to raise my voice and cause a scene, the best I could. I hoped they would send the wire just to get me to quit disrupting their normal flow of customers. I’m normally a quiet guy but my business, and maybe career, depended on convincing the branch manager to send this wire out. After two hours and a lot of calls with higher-ups, they consented, but they said they had to send a team to my office the next day to inspect my “business.” The office space I had was nothing to fancy, to say the least. The building was fine, an 11-story class A. The office, a sublease, was 3 rooms. Open the door and you were immediately on the “trading floor”, which was one row of desks where the 5 of us sat. It had a small kitchen and a tiny conference room to the side. There were a lot of computers but of course no receptionist, no art, no waiting area, just a handful of 20 or 30 something year olds in shorts (August in Houston) with a football nearby. Chase sent 3 bankers in suits. It was… awkward. I led them to the conference room and tried to explain what we did and why the funds had the velocity they did. They quickly told me that they were not equipped to handle my account and I needed to find another bank by the end of the week. I asked them to facilitate the wires for another couple days until I could, which they agreed to. I called Smith Barney, my broker in NY, and explained the situation. They immediately understood and helped me open a bank account there. In retrospect, I should have had my investment account there from the beginning. I’d already had my business account at the local Chase and figured they were my bank. I had not properly distinguished between local Chase and JPMorgan Chase. I didn’t know any better. As I later learned more about banking regs and KYC rules, I realized the local branch acted exactly as to be expected given the circumstance. It was my fault. Luckily, it got straightened out and I can laugh about it now. I still think about how naive I had been every time I drive by the bank branch.