http://www.reuters.com/ LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The company that runs one of the worst-performing mutual funds in the United States has taken a huge gamble by hiring the youngest mutual fund manager ever, a 20-year-old stock picker who has not graduated college. Frontier Equity Fund, run by Freedom Investors Corp., hired Chris Lahiji after his fantasy mutual fund -- a stock portfolio that was tracked on the Internet but had no real money at risk -- racked up a 170 percent return in about a year. The assets of Frontier Equity Fund, based in a suburb of Milwaukee, have jumped tenfold in the last half-year, most of it since Lahiji became co-manager in September, as investors, including his parents, poured in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I wouldn't mind giving some of my money to this kid. Obviously, he is doing something right to rack up gains. The botton line is to make money. A proven track record like other mutual funds may have certainly doesn't mean jack in the the future.
There is a big difference between racking up REAL gains versus papertrading sans commission. We could all be a millionaire ten times over if papertrading was real and you didn't have to deal with commissions/slippage. Not to mention that if he really is running a mutual fund of any size, then he's going to have to learn new set of skills like not revealing the size of his load. Its one thing to swing a few thousand shares in his "micro"stocks, but another thing entirely if he's going to swing thousands of BLOCKS.
It should be all about ability and maturity, regardless of age . Older people trying to portray themself as wiser but to me the young idiot will be an old idiot . If he is a great picker he will do fine regardless where he works. There will be enough of money management people overruling him if he gets carried away. Walter