SALT Conference - How many people are attending

I am just wondering how many people here are going to Anthony Scaramucci's SALT conference tomorrow?

www.saltconference.com/

I am not attending this one but will probably be present at the SALT conference in Singapore later this year.

They have Maroon 5 as musical guest this year which really doesn't impress me all that much. Personally I would much prefer a genuine rock legend like AC/DC or Ted Nugent.

 
nameback:
Commuter:
Sarah Palin and Al Gore are key note speakers.

No

Does anyone really go for the keynotes? I'm under the impression it's much more about the networking...

People go to conferences/symposiums/luncheons/roundtable discussions for the same reason they go to bars-- to see and be seen, meet and greet, especially people that may be hard to run into otherwise.

The SALT conference is sort of a pep rally for the hedge fund industry, and most major players, movers and shakers will be among the delegates. Last year CNBC broadcasted live from the Bellagio for the duration of the conference, they will likely do the same again this year.

Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep.
 
rothyman:
At $9,000/ticket it's a steep price to pay, but totally worth it if your company will expense it.

I actually met the organizer from SkyBridge at a lounge a few weeks ago in NYC.. definitely will be going next year.

You mean Amanda Ober? She is nice. The amazing thing about SALT is that, event at $9000/hedge fund attendee, it still sells out very quickly and you would have to request an invitation in the first place.

I am definitely looking forward to next May's SALT conference, maybe I will see you there.

Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep.
 
brandon st randy:
rothyman:
At $9,000/ticket it's a steep price to pay, but totally worth it if your company will expense it.

I actually met the organizer from SkyBridge at a lounge a few weeks ago in NYC.. definitely will be going next year.

You mean Amanda Ober? She is nice. The amazing thing about SALT is that, event at $9000/hedge fund attendee, it still sells out very quickly and you would have to request an invitation in the first place.

I am definitely looking forward to next May's SALT conference, maybe I will see you there.

Victor.

And yes, it's worth every penny if you go there with your networking game face on..

 

There are a lot of people that I think would be great to hear (Loeb, Bass, Sprott, Cooperman, Greenblatt, Rosenstein) and probably 4-5x more I would pay not to hear.

Would it be fun to see a bunch of famous people, listen to bands, go out in Vegas, etc? Of course. That being said the guys I mentioned above will probably speak for a cumulative amount of an hour. I'll pass.

 
Gray Fox:
There are a lot of people that I think would be great to hear (Loeb, Bass, Sprott, Cooperman, Greenblatt, Rosenstein) and probably 4-5x more I would pay not to hear.

Would it be fun to see a bunch of famous people, listen to bands, go out in Vegas, etc? Of course. That being said the guys I mentioned above will probably speak for a cumulative amount of an hour. I'll pass.

No one pays to goto SALT to hear people speak. Of course it is beneficial and a bonus.. but SALT is primarily a networking conference. The whole goal is to go there and meet prospective investors, service providers, industry veterans, and to make contacts in the industry.

 
nameback:
So I've been at SALT for three days now and I'd say it's gone fairly well. I'm a little disappointed in the number of allocators at the conference -- they're really dwarfed in number by managers and service providers. I'm thinking that the Newport Family Office conference coming up this summer might be a better place to do capital raising.

How much capital are you trying to raise from the LPs? How much money do you have in your fund already?

Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep.
 

Didn't go but loved hearing the response to Maroon 5. I almost feel bad for Adam Levine, he had no clue what he was getting himself into when he accepted whatever fat chunk of cash they offered him to perform. Dealbreaker made it sound pretty bad too haha.

Then again I had other people tell me that everyone knew who they were and loved the performance, so who knows.

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 
BlackHat:
Didn't go but loved hearing the response to Maroon 5. I almost feel bad for Adam Levine, he had no clue what he was getting himself into when he accepted whatever fat chunk of cash they offered him to perform. Dealbreaker made it sound pretty bad too haha.

Then again I had other people tell me that everyone knew who they were and loved the performance, so who knows.

I knew it! Maroon 5 is definitely an odd choice given the demographic of this gathering, but then so is Sarah Palin...

I imagine the younger analysts/business development/IR people would know who they are, but certainly not the older hedge fund managers, endowment funds, family offices, institutional investors etc.

They should have hired some 80s rock legends like Brett Michaels or Ted Nugent instead.

Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep.
 
brandon st randy:
They should have hired some 80s rock legends like Brett Michaels or Ted Nugent instead.

Neither of those choices is very media-friendly to the tight-laced crowd these days... particularly Ted (who might have shot one of the keynote speakers) hahaha

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 
BlackHat:
Didn't go but loved hearing the response to Maroon 5. I almost feel bad for Adam Levine, he had no clue what he was getting himself into when he accepted whatever fat chunk of cash they offered him to perform. Dealbreaker made it sound pretty bad too haha.

Then again I had other people tell me that everyone knew who they were and loved the performance, so who knows.

I didn't attend the concert, but I heard they were actually pretty good, which is impressive despite the fact that half the crowd had no idea who they were and weren't into it at all.

Saw about five minutes of Sarah Palin before I had to either leave the room to escape her shrill, vapid pandering or shoot myself.

 
nameback:
BlackHat:
Didn't go but loved hearing the response to Maroon 5. I almost feel bad for Adam Levine, he had no clue what he was getting himself into when he accepted whatever fat chunk of cash they offered him to perform. Dealbreaker made it sound pretty bad too haha.

Then again I had other people tell me that everyone knew who they were and loved the performance, so who knows.

I didn't attend the concert, but I heard they were actually pretty good, which is impressive despite the fact that half the crowd had no idea who they were and weren't into it at all.

Saw about five minutes of Sarah Palin before I had to either leave the room to escape her shrill, vapid pandering or shoot myself.

I was reading Absolute Return's twitter posts of palin's comments, and I just wanted to cringe. No idea why Mooch invited her; I guess he just wanted the notoriety.

Nameback, who were your favorite speakers? How were the social events?

 
Brady4MVP:
nameback:
BlackHat:
Didn't go but loved hearing the response to Maroon 5. I almost feel bad for Adam Levine, he had no clue what he was getting himself into when he accepted whatever fat chunk of cash they offered him to perform. Dealbreaker made it sound pretty bad too haha.

Then again I had other people tell me that everyone knew who they were and loved the performance, so who knows.

I didn't attend the concert, but I heard they were actually pretty good, which is impressive despite the fact that half the crowd had no idea who they were and weren't into it at all.

Saw about five minutes of Sarah Palin before I had to either leave the room to escape her shrill, vapid pandering or shoot myself.

I was reading Absolute Return's twitter posts of palin's comments, and I just wanted to cringe. No idea why Mooch invited her; I guess he just wanted the notoriety.

Nameback, who were your favorite speakers? How were the social events?

I think I only saw Mezrich and Palin -- I was rogue attending so technically I wasn't supposed to be in any of the official SALT panels/events. Mezrich was pretty entertaining.

The social events were good; that's why I was there. I got a lot of good networking done, and I think a few months down the line we might actually get our first allocation thanks to people I met at SALT. It was also a lot of fun. The Rothstein and Lazard guys were particularly generous and treated me to pretty much everything while I was there.

 
Best Response
nameback:

I think I only saw Mezrich and Palin -- I was rogue attending so technically I wasn't supposed to be in any of the official SALT panels/events. Mezrich was pretty entertaining.

The social events were good; that's why I was there. I got a lot of good networking done, and I think a few months down the line we might actually get our first allocation thanks to people I met at SALT. It was also a lot of fun. The Rothstein and Lazard guys were particularly generous and treated me to pretty much everything while I was there.

How did you rogue attend this conference? Did you borrow the conference badge from someone that registered? I never attended this conference but judging from my experiences attending similarly priced events, they tend to have many personnels walking around/guarding the conference areas to make sure that only attendees are present.

Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep.
 

Now I wish I had attended SALT and spent sometime hanging out with Messier. Geismar at the Blackjack table...

Most attendees of a three-day hedge-fund conference in Las Vegas earlier this month left with a canvas tote bag, some free pens and a stack of business cards. One left with $710,000 in blackjack winnings.

Bloomberg News Michael Geismar, who co-founded $4.6 billion managed futures firm Quantitative Investment Management, turned $300 and a $10,000 line of credit at the Bellagio into $470,000 in a six-hour stretch that began on a Tuesday night, the trade publication AR Magazine reported last week.

After a few losing sessions over the next two days, Mr. Geismar turned in another winning performance Thursday night, before the SkyBridge Alternatives conference ended. Betting on other players’ hands and his own, with bets as big as $10,000, he racked up enough to bring his jackpot to $710,000. And that’s after doling out tens of thousands of dollars in tips.

“I was definitely planning on playing; I certainly was not planning on winning anything near that much,” the 41-year-old hedge fund manager said by phone Friday from a firm retreat at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, adding that the sum was his biggest jackpot “by far.” The payday extends his winning streak at SALT; he took home smaller winnings last year, he said.

Mr. Geismar said he plays blackjack at casinos perhaps twice a year, and that he follows a simple strategy: follow the instructions on a blackjack strategy card he lays out on the table. “The only thing I do is I vary my bet sizes based on how well I’m doing,” he said. Each time he wins, he increases the size of his wager; similarly, he decreases the size of his wager each time he loses. “The concept is, if I lose 10 hands in a row, I’m going to lose my minimum bet at least nine of those times…but if I win 10 hands in a row by pressing my bet every time—not doubling it, just making it bigger—I’m going to win a lot more than when I lose 10 hands in a row,” he said.

Mr. Geismar joins a star-studded list of money managers who’ve won at the card tables, but poker appears to be the game of choice. Citadel’s Ken Griffin and Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, who famously shorted Lehman Brothers, have competed at the World Series of Poker. Fellow hedge-fund managers James Simons (now retired), Marc Lasry, Cliff Asness and Boaz Weinstein are also known to favor the game.

The Virginia native said he prefers blackjack because it’s a more social game, with players playing against the house rather than each other. Plus, he said, “Poker’s more of a grind,” he said. “You can make money playing poker but you can’t make the money you can make on blackjack when you go on big runs.”

The Charlottesville, Va.-based Quantitative Investment Management, which Mr. Geismar and Jaffrey Woodriff founded in 2000, runs a $3.9 billion managed futures fund that trades mostly stock index futures, interest rates and currencies. After topping its high-water mark in 2011, it has posted annualized returns of about 13% and is up about 6% this year. The firm also has a $700 million long-short equity fund.

Mr. Geismar said he used his Vegas winnings to buy gifts for his and his wife’s four children and fund a weekend trip to New York where his wife, Ellen, shopped. He’s invested the rest of the winnings via his firm and other investments, he said.

He looked to extend his winning streak over Memorial Day weekend at the Greenbrier’s casino—but what happened in Vegas appears to have stayed in Vegas. “I lost a little bit,” he said, “but it wasn’t significant.”

Update: Quantitative Investment Management has posted annualized returns of about 13% and is up about 6% this year.

Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep.
 

I think it's a few grand to go. I'm on their invite list so I get invited every year. My fund is currently too small for institutionals but I'll probably go there a couple years from now. As far as I've heard, it's a very good conference. It's not the type of conference to go to for recruiting. It's more for fund managers to network with LPs and other fund managers.

 
alexpasch:
I think it's a few grand to go. I'm on their invite list so I get invited every year. My fund is currently too small for institutionals but I'll probably go there a couple years from now. As far as I've heard, it's a very good conference. It's not the type of conference to go to for recruiting. It's more for fund managers to network with LPs and other fund managers.

I'm not on the invite list, so I can't go. But for those who are well established in the business, it seems like a must attend conference, along with the Morgan Stanley hedge fund conference in palm beach in february.

There are apparently a lot of crazy parties at the bellagio during that conference.

 

SALT is very fund-raising/networking focused-our IR/marketing guy went last year, said it was basically a free-for-all of people like him trying to gladhand the LPs/FOF/endowment people with the speakers as a pretense/afterthought, whereas the Ira Sohn is much more focused on the actual speakers and their ideas.

The Ira Sohn conference usually includes high-conviction ideas from elite managers, I can't think of anything I'd rather do than listen to those presentations.

There have been many great comebacks throughout history. Jesus was dead but then came back as an all-powerful God-Zombie.
 

Nostrum est adipisci illo omnis adipisci earum aut expedita. Maiores ullam laborum et numquam fugit dolor cumque. Modi natus ducimus voluptas saepe magni suscipit voluptas.

Rerum quisquam exercitationem id dolorem. Qui rerum saepe nemo aliquam sit. Excepturi laborum qui vero nobis illum ad exercitationem quas. Asperiores molestias a enim. Quos aut quia porro. Amet temporibus veritatis et impedit cumque.

Repellendus optio ratione sint qui quia aut. Omnis est facere assumenda suscipit. Expedita consectetur nihil omnis fuga. Velit magnam ipsam sequi sit enim recusandae. Totam culpa doloremque et qui in sit. Fugiat ducimus totam vel velit eum autem provident.

Atque necessitatibus quia est praesentium ad. Et voluptates omnis est quo. Sit voluptas qui rem inventore sint eos magnam sint.

Career Advancement Opportunities

March 2024 Hedge Fund

  • Point72 98.9%
  • D.E. Shaw 97.9%
  • Magnetar Capital 96.8%
  • Citadel Investment Group 95.8%
  • AQR Capital Management 94.7%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

March 2024 Hedge Fund

  • Magnetar Capital 98.9%
  • D.E. Shaw 97.8%
  • Blackstone Group 96.8%
  • Two Sigma Investments 95.7%
  • Citadel Investment Group 94.6%

Professional Growth Opportunities

March 2024 Hedge Fund

  • AQR Capital Management 99.0%
  • Point72 97.9%
  • D.E. Shaw 96.9%
  • Citadel Investment Group 95.8%
  • Magnetar Capital 94.8%

Total Avg Compensation

March 2024 Hedge Fund

  • Portfolio Manager (9) $1,648
  • Vice President (23) $474
  • Director/MD (12) $423
  • NA (6) $322
  • 3rd+ Year Associate (24) $287
  • Manager (4) $282
  • Engineer/Quant (71) $274
  • 2nd Year Associate (30) $251
  • 1st Year Associate (73) $190
  • Analysts (225) $179
  • Intern/Summer Associate (22) $131
  • Junior Trader (5) $102
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (249) $85
notes
16 IB Interviews Notes

“... there’s no excuse to not take advantage of the resources out there available to you. Best value for your $ are the...”

Leaderboard

success
From 10 rejections to 1 dream investment banking internship

“... I believe it was the single biggest reason why I ended up with an offer...”