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:

Epsilon Theory Discovery Map

By Rusty Guinn | January 3, 2019 | 5 Comments

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.

Multiple Ways to Lose (AAPL)

By Rusty Guinn | January 3, 2019 | Comments Off on Multiple Ways to Lose (AAPL)

We examine how Apple found both of the ways to lose on Narrative in less than two months’ time, and outline how that might change the playbook for the near-, medium- and long-term for different investor types.

Audacity

By Rusty Guinn | January 1, 2019 | 1 Comment

Some resolution season advice for young professionals who would become successful professional investors without becoming charlatans – a task easier said than done.

Looking for Laffer-Likes

By Rusty Guinn | December 31, 2018 | 4 Comments

Complex systems and uncertainty influence us to look for something – anything – to hang our hat on. The problem? We’re prone to hang our hats on extrapolations of the rare facts we can find, many of which have no explanatory power at the margin, where markets live and breathe.

In the News | Week of 12.31.2018

By Rusty Guinn | December 30, 2018 | 0 Comments

Summary on most narrative-linked news of one announcing US company and this week’s December non-farm payrolls and unemployment updates.

In the News | Week of 12.24.2018

By Rusty Guinn | December 21, 2018 | Comments Off on In the News | Week of 12.24.2018

With limited markets-related events next week, we instead highlight some of the most representative (and unique) reviews of 2018.

The Prediction Polka

By Rusty Guinn | December 20, 2018 | 6 Comments

We would usually tell you that all information is information. There is no good or bad. No right or wrong. But some things aren’t even information. Knowing what you can ignore is worthwhile.

Twilight of the (Consumer) Goods?

By Rusty Guinn | December 20, 2018 | Comments Off on Twilight of the (Consumer) Goods?

With increasing attention to trade and tariff narratives and falling attention to inflation and growth narratives in the U.S., we believe that investors may benefit from focus on sectors on which the latter narratives have weighed heavily in 2018. Of particular interest? Brand-oriented consumer stocks, especially many staples that have been left for dead.

The Road to Tannu Tuva, Pt. 1

By Rusty Guinn | December 19, 2018 | 5 Comments

When our processes of inquiry lack challenge, doubt and obsession with falsifying our best ideas, the result is inevitable. Our conclusions cease to be science and become something else entirely. That something else is a thing sensitive to narrative, vulnerable to priors and bias. That something else is scientism.

We Had The Same Crazy Idea

By Rusty Guinn | December 18, 2018 | 9 Comments

It is a frustrating truth that good – even great – investors rarely know exactly what it is that makes them good. And so the inevitable guilty pleasure of investors – building portfolios from the best ideas of their various managers and advisors – is almost always doomed to fail from the beginning.