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:
Distillation isn’t a process of concentration. It isn’t a natural progression. It is a violent changing of the underlying thing. So, too, is portfolio construction.
It’s easy to convince ourselves that the opposite of being Narrative-driven is being data-driven. This is a lie. The most common way that narrative influences our behavior is through unadorned data, presented with the unstated implication that it is necessary, sufficient and explanatory.
Access this month’s monitor slides in Powerpoint and in PDF. Access the monitor values in Excel. As we noted in November, missionaries in force were a leading indicator for…
Access this month’s monitor slides in Powerpoint and in PDF. Access the monitor values in Excel. Fiscal policy in the US remains a largely low-attention topic with little in…
Access this month’s monitor slides in Powerpoint and in PDF. Access the monitor values in Excel. The focus on a China Trade War narratives accelerated even further in December.…
Access this month’s monitor slides in Powerpoint and in PDF. Access the monitor values in Excel. Attention to central bank narratives rose sharply in December, with a renewed attention…
Access this month’s monitor slides in Powerpoint and in PDF. Access the monitor values in Excel. For yet another month, stock market declines refocused investor narratives – especially concerning…
Three reporting companies this week. The most-connected articles include an odd weed obsession among media and analysts, and a…rather unfortunate Delta experience.
When it comes to politics and social media, making up straw men about our enemies to make them look ridiculous seems like good entertainment. But beware embracing amusing-but-wrong cartoons in zero sum games.
Introducing the Epsilon Theory Discovery Map – a novel way to navigate the Epsilon Theory archives, not based on chronology or author, but based on connectivity, similarity and consistency in the underlying narratives.