Rusty Guinn

Rusty Guinn

Co-Founder and CEO

 @WRGuinn

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:

US Fiscal Policy Monitor – 3.31.2019

By Rusty Guinn | April 4, 2019 | Comments Off on US Fiscal Policy Monitor – 3.31.2019

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.…

Trade and Tariffs Monitor – 3.31.2019

By Rusty Guinn | April 4, 2019 | Comments Off on Trade and Tariffs Monitor – 3.31.2019

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.…

Central Bank Omnipotence Monitor – 3.31.2019

By Rusty Guinn | April 4, 2019 | Comments Off on Central Bank Omnipotence Monitor – 3.31.2019

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.…

Inflation Monitor – 3.31.2019

By Rusty Guinn | April 4, 2019 | Comments Off on Inflation Monitor – 3.31.2019

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.…

First World Problems in Fund Management

By Rusty Guinn | April 3, 2019 | 4 Comments

An interesting question with a straightforward answer. Put simply, if a fund manager tells you they’re selling, ignore the reason they give and replace it with “Big founder wants liquidity.”

Office Hours – 4.2.2019

By Rusty Guinn | April 2, 2019 | Comments Off on Office Hours – 4.2.2019

Welcome! A few reminders as usual: We begin pretty promptly at 2PM. If you don’t see the video by 2:01 PM ET, try reloading the…

The Zeitgeist – 4.1.2019

By Rusty Guinn | April 1, 2019 | 3 Comments

Today’s Zeitgeist is all about trust in the trustless (ugh), hope springing eternal in Value Added, benchmarking the unbenchmarkable, Fiat News through bad Googling, and why we can’t shake fat fingers.

The Weekend Zeitgeist – 3.30.2019

By Rusty Guinn | March 30, 2019 | 9 Comments

The weekend Zeitgeist, in which we are reminded that we need Silicon Valley to tell us what art is, that we need Zucker and Murdoch to tell us what news is, and opposing politicians to tell us what we should be mad about.

The Front

By Rusty Guinn | March 26, 2019 | 2 Comments

We take a break from Fiat News to talk about the much simpler, much more straightforward ways that we are told how to think.

They’re not new, but in the Widening Gyre of our current political Zeitgeist, they are becoming the main attraction.

The Zeitgeist Weekend Edition – 3.24.2019

By Rusty Guinn | March 24, 2019 | 5 Comments

The weekend Zeitgeist, in which the Gray Lady’s news coverage gets even grayer, everybody loves Beto, Rusty discovers a new Hall of Fame about which he has opinions, and abstracted thinking in cheese research.