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Superfund
$85 Million
Superfund founder Christian Baha has defied the skeptics who snickered at his strategy of selling managed futures to the little guy. Baha, an Austrian who dropped out of college and in his TV commercials pokes fun at his accent and his inability to properly pronounce “investor,” allows clients to pony up as little as $5,000. His is a pure retail strategy that seems to toy with government restrictions on marketing. “I would love to tell you about Superfund, but regulations prevent me from describing it on television,” he says with a friendly smirk.
Last year Baha’s Quadriga Superfund U.S. portfolios generated 30 percent average returns; they qualify as hedge funds because they include short positions and charge a 1.85 percent management fee and a 25 percent performance fee. His more aggressive overseas funds, some of which charge a 6 percent management fee and as much as 35 percent of profits, surged by 46 percent on average.
Baha, 40, is one of seven systematic trend followers on this year’s list of top earners. A former police officer for the city of Vienna, he says his firm tracks 120 markets. Last year it was generally short global equity indexes and long many bond markets. In the first half of the year, it was long corn, gold, oil, soybeans and wheat and then shifted strategy, shorting many of those commodities. At year’s end it was managing $1.65 billion.
