Ex-Citi trader launches 'sleep-at-night' long/short equity fund

Joel S. Salomon

After working at Citi's proprietary trading desk, managing a large portfolio between 2008 and 2011, Joel S. Salomon founded SalaurMor Management in New York and launched his first fund, a value-oriented, long/short equity hedge fund focused on financial institutions, in June 2013.

"2008 and 2009 were characterized by extreme volatility," he told Opalesque. "The markets would move 3% or 4% daily quite often. At the peak, I was managing $700 million and the volatility implied that I was effectively managing multiples of that amount based on the beta adjusted gross exposure. So I have experience managing through extreme volatile periods with a large amount of money."

If you had asked him 20 years ago what his dream job was, he would have said hedge fund manager. He has been working toward that goal throughout his career, and especially since SalaurMor was launched.

"I was working as an actuary for New York Life Insurance Company about 20 years ago," he said, "and not really loving my day job but really enjoying my evening or weekends when I was analyzing stocks. I decided to align my hobby and my career. I talked to a number of actuaries who were on Wall Street and asked them what they did to get where they were. Many of them suggested going to a rating agency. So I was lucky to get a job working for Moody's for a number of years, and then I got into private equity and then eventually public equities. Then I worked at a small hedge fund before going to Citigroup. After 25 years analyzing and investing on financials and having consistent results even during very volatile periods, I decided it was time to replicate my investment strategy and launch my own fund.&qu......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.