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Comment by waffle_maniac | Hacker News Reader

There was a comment in a thread on HN a while ago by someone that interviewed with Thiel's hedge fund. Apparently the fund lost a lot of money and Thiel was directing the trading decisions. Other investors pulled their money and it was mostly Thiel's money in the fund going forward.

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That was maybe me? If not someone else had the exact same experience. Was an odd interview, took place at a mostly empty office building in the presidio. Afterwards I was wandering around in the fog trying to get a cell signal to call an Uber which added to the ghost town feeling.

My understanding is that Thiel's public fund often takes loss because he is hedging other financial risk he is taking.(e.g. holding palantir after IPO, large VC investments in industries that may turn out to be based on immature research)

Hahaha you don't believe that, do you?

If that's true, it's more evil than just being bad at investing. Leveraging other people's money to make contrarian bets as a hedge to the investments you believe in enough to put your money in, when the reason those people are giving you money is to align their money with yours, is ethically if not legally fraud.

Wasn't Eric Weinstein also involved with that hedge fund? Or am I mixing things up?

Possibly. Thiel has Clarium, “Thiel Capital” and “Thiel Macro” associated with his name. Weinstein was a managing director at Thiel Capital.

I interviewed with Thiel Macro years ago when I got the story of the investors pulling out and the fund being primarily Thiel’s money from my interviewer. Not sure which if any of these are the same corporate entity.

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