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 plays guitar and drums on the worship team at his church in Connecticut, and dabbles in cooking, whisky, progressive rock and beating Ben at trivia.
Articles by Rusty:
It’s the Weekend Zeitgeist! In which anti-Semitism raises its ugly head (again), the iconoclasm debate joins the fray (again), we stress about the gig economy, observe a campaign that doesn’t fit the Narrative, explain away funeral cost increases and finally – finally! – hear the true story of…sky penis?
It’s the Thursday Zeitgeist, from sporadic United Wi-fi, high in the air above all of you. Today is about bank cartoons, the warm afterglow of an industry conference that ‘really shook things up’, the drumbeats of value, a reminder to ask ‘why am I reading this NOW’ and some trade war trading advice we can (mostly) get behind.
Ben and Rusty discuss games of chicken and multi-level games, and where we think the previously complacent trade and tariffs narrative has gone in early May.
It’s the Weekend Zeitgeist, where we leave the world of finance for a day, in which high costs of credit and criminal justice remain top-of-mind concerns, Bulgaria stems the tide of its brain-drain, Reuters publishes straight opinions as news, Stephen Moore goes on Glassdoor, and we all succumb to the collective solipsism of nostalgic reverie.
It’s the Friday Zeitgeist! In which we explore new ecological niches, dust off our not-so-dusty trade war battle plans, announce the latest winner of “Who’s Going to Blame Risk Parity First”, and talk fairness and Fair Isaac.
Hyper-awareness of narrative, memes and cartoons can become paralyzing. Once we see them, we see them everywhere. But much of that paralysis comes because the demands of Clear Eyes are less than the demands of Full Hearts. And it’s the latter – identity – that truly matters.
It’s the Wednesday Zeitgeist, in which we get the updated odds on the China Trade War, the updated ways to play the odds on the China Trade War, two quasi-sovereign oil & gas operators’ investments in blockchain-as-a-service, financialization again, and a reminder that what is dead may never die.
Access the Powerpoint slides of this month’s ET Pro monitors here. Access the PDF version of the ET Pro monitor slides here. Access the underlying Excel data here.…
Access the Powerpoint slides of this month’s ET Pro monitors here. Access the PDF version of the ET Pro monitor slides here. Access the underlying Excel data here.…
Access the Powerpoint slides of this month’s ET Pro monitors here. Access the PDF version of the ET Pro monitor slides here. Access the underlying Excel data here.…