Ben Hunt
Co-Founder and CIO
Ben Hunt is the creator of Epsilon Theory and inspiration behind Second Foundation Partners, which he co-founded with Rusty Guinn in June 2018.
Epsilon Theory, Second Foundation’s principal publishing brand, is a newsletter and website that examines markets through the lenses of game theory and history. Over 100,000 professional investors and allocators across 180 countries read Epsilon Theory for its fresh perspective and novel insights into market dynamics. As Chief Investment Officer, Ben bears primary responsibility for determining the Company’s investment views and positioning of model portfolios. He is also the primary author of materials distributed through Epsilon Theory.
Ben taught political science for 10 years: at New York University from 1991 until 1997 and (with tenure) at Southern Methodist University from 1997 until 2000. He also wrote two academic books: Getting to War (Univ. of Michigan Press, 1997) and Policy and Party Competition (Routledge, 1992), which he co-authored with Michael Laver. Ben is the founder of two technology companies and the co-founder of SmartEquip, Inc., a software company for the construction equipment industry that provides intelligent schematics and parts diagrams to facilitate e-commerce in spare parts.
He began his investment career in 2003, first in venture capital and subsequently on two long/short equity hedge funds. He worked at Iridian Asset Management from 2006 until 2011 and TIG Advisors from 2012 until 2013. He joined Rusty at Salient in 2013, where he combined his background as a portfolio manager, risk manager, and entrepreneur with academic experience in game theory and econometrics to work with Salient’s own portfolio managers and its financial advisor clients to improve client outcomes.
Ben is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (1986) and earned his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 1991. He lives in the wilds of Redding, CT on Little River Farm, where he personifies the dilettante farmer that has been a stock comedic character since Cicero's day. Luckily his wife, Jennifer, and four daughters, Harper, Hannah, Haven and Halle, are always there to save the day. Ben's hobbies include comic books, Alabama football, beekeeping, and humoring Rusty in trivia "competitions".
Articles by Ben:
I learn a lot from Camp Kotok, the 5 day fishing trip up in the wilds of Maine that David Kotok, founder and CIO of Cumberland Advisors, hosts every summer for wealth managers, economists, traders, etc.
Most of what I learn at Camp Kotok has nothing to do with the actual facts being discussed and debated, but on whether topics are being discussed and debated at all.
When the State Department announced on August 12th that it was removing all remaining non-essential personnel from Kabul within 3 days and was considering a relocation of the US embassy to the more defensible airport, the fall of the Afghani government became common knowledge.
And that’s when everything fell apart.
From the ET Forum … If Barbara Tuchman were alive she would be adding another chapter to her classic The March of Folly.I am fascinated to…
It’s the only question that really matters here in the Age of Nudge: why do we want what we want?
A conversation with Luke Burgis, author of “Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life”.
This month we are adding an entirely new “cuisine” to ET Professional by applying our methods to predicting strength/weakness in the US Dollar (specifically the DXY index). We’re taking the techniques and tools and ingredients that we’ve been using to understand central bank Narrative archetypes, and applying them to an analysis of dollar index price movements instead of equity index price movements.
Here’s my take on this weekend’s Senate wrangling over the infrastructure bill, and the implications for crypto.
The US Treasury is the Eye of Sauron — a gigantic panopticon tower that sweeps the world with its unblinking gaze, seeking out the owners of power, i.e. money.
And Sauron remains undefeated.
From the ET Forum … With the jobs report today showing 4% year-over-year wage inflation and 0.4% month-over-month wage inflation, it seems like a good…
In the world of Nudge, everyone is an ad man, and the government is just the biggest, baddest ad man of them all.
A replay of the July 2021 Epsilon Theory webinar covering our latest narrative research and the release of our new ET Pro Monitors: the Consolidated Directional Equity Dashboard and the Consolidated Equity Trend Dashboard.
From the ET Forum … So that’s where we are in our local real estate market – low demand, low supply, high price expectations – and my…