Rusty Guinn
Co-Founder and CEO
Rusty Guinn is co-Founder and CEO of Second Foundation Partners, LLC, and has been a contributing author to Epsilon Theory since 2017.
Before Ben and Rusty established Second Foundation, Rusty served in a variety of investment roles in several organizations. He managed and operated a $10+ billion investment business, led investment strategy for the second largest wealth management franchise in Houston, and sat on the management committee of the 6th largest public pension fund in the United States.
Most recently, Rusty was Executive Vice President over the retail and institutional asset management businesses at Salient Partners in Houston, Texas. There he oversaw the 5-year restructuring and transition of Salient’s $10 billion money management business from legacy fund-of-funds products to a dedicated real assets franchise.
He previously served as Director of Strategic Partnerships and Opportunistic Investments at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, a $12 billion portfolio spanning public and private investments. Rusty also served as a portfolio manager for TRS’s externally managed global macro hedge fund and long-only equity portfolios. He led diligence, process development and the allocation of billions of dollars across a wide range of indirect and principal investments.
Rusty’s career also includes roles with de Guardiola Advisors, an investment bank serving the asset management industry, and Asset Management Finance, a specialized private equity investor in asset management companies.
He is a graduate of the Wharton School, and lives on a farm in Fairfield, Connecticut with wife Pam and sons Winston and Harry. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Houston Youth Symphony, and with Pam has been a long-time supporter and founding Friend of the Houston Shakespeare Festival. He also serves as a member of the Easton Volunteer Fire Company in Easton, Connecticut. Rusty spends his free time smoking meat, working his apple orchard, enjoying whisky, badly butchering progressive rock drumming and jeopardizing long-term relationships through high-stakes board games.
Articles by Rusty:
Lots of Blockchain, UK house prices subdued, trade talks weigh, idol worship perilous, a rich kid buys gold and why Nintendo goes back to Pokemon.
A World Full of Elons, the unrevolutionary foldable era, the fastest strike in history and more arbitrary causal links in financial media.
Markets ‘seek clarity’ on China/US trade, fire engine manufacturers, drug price hearings, and lowball hostile bids.
The hobbyist farmer can afford to spread wildflower seeds to the wind and the elements. The professional farmer, on the other hand, doesn’t have this luxury. Neither do any of us as investors.
Home improvement, midstream energy, travel and leisure, and the heart attack that wasn’t caused by energy drinks.
A tariff three-fer, subsidizing orphans like it’s a bad thing, Buffett buffetted, and MMT/GND propaganda shifts into a new gear.
Highs on trade hopes, mixed on trade talks, creepy refrigerators, CRM for Main Street and Insurance Love Stories.
Usually we draw attention to narratives not because we like them, but because we believe investors can’t afford to ignore them. But the intense gravity of a directionless Narrative is a different matter altogether.
In which we focus on struggles and changes at asset managers, Soc Gen misses the boat, and markets ‘move’, ‘inch’ and ‘advance’ on trade optimism.
Pesky stock analysts, an earnings season focus on power and energy, and a late run on descriptive terms for the China Trade negotiations.