Moez Kassam and the Anson Funds
Anson was named after the Hanson brothers, who were very popular when Moez was a kid in the 1990s. But he didn’t want to get into any trademark trouble, so he took out the “H.” In 1999, when Moez was a student at the University of Western Ontario, he started investing by borrowing money from a classmate. From the beginning, he was not very strong.
He made money when Pets.com and Mamma.com went down. It’s not very common to begin on the shorter side. But he doesn’t do anything special with music. MMMBop by Hanson is his favorite song by them.
Anson’s main fund, the Master Fund, was started in 2007 with $8 million from friends and family and a more experienced investor from Dallas, Bruce Winson. The fund did well in its first three years, with a compound growth rate of 14.9% and a gain of 1.8% in 2008. Bruce is now in charge of most of Anson’s business and makes long bets, while Moez focuses on short bets.
Catalyst Capital sued Anson and West Face Capital on the grounds that “Wolfpack Conspirators” worked to hurt Callidus, the struggling lender. Callidus got into trouble itself, of course, so it could understand its clients better.
I didn’t want to write about Anson because I didn’t know much about them and I didn’t want to get in trouble. So, the worst thing I’m willing to say about Moez Kassam is that, with the help of an assertive hairstylist, his hair has a lot of potential to look normal.
Anson Master had a return of 19% in 2018 and had been growing at a rate of 11% since July 2007, after fees of 2/20. This is much higher than the S&P 500’s return of about 7.6%. (I don’t know what the effects on the currency could be.)
The most they lost was 18.60%. Between 2007 and 2009, a lot of value was added. In the bull market since the financial crisis of 2008, Anson hasn’t done better than the S&P 500. Still, Anson has some of the best numbers I’ve seen among Canadian hedge funds, especially if it does what it says it does and tries to be market neutral. As of May, the fund is about 3% down for the year.
The fund’s AUM is about $366 million. I don’t know what’s interesting enough about any of this for me to write about it. Gary Ng is a self-made businessman, so his collection of watches is probably worth more.
Anson makes creative trades, including trades that depend on secondary financing. They gave money to a lot of marijuana businesses. There are rumors in the business world that one of Anson’s cannabis shorts, Tilray, got into trouble.
In just a few months, Tilray went from being worth $30 to more than $150. Anson seemed to have been caught in the short squeeze. I don’t know what any of those words mean, whether you call it a kerfuffle, an imbroglio, or a brouhaha. But it could just as easily be the other way around: Moez was quoted in 2019 as saying about Tilray, “You knew this was a best-in-class business.
I think Tilray will be considered cheap in a few years.” It’s $7 now, so maybe he was right all along. Anson may have been long or short on one or more Tilray securities, either one after the other or at the same time. They might have made money, lost money, or made no money at all. I hope I’ve covered everything.
Moez works with many charities, like Doctors Without Borders, Kids Cook, and Lifeline Syria. Aside from trying to move up the social ladder, he does a lot of good work because he has an admirable sense of social justice. Early in life, he learned to care about others.
As a teenager, he was told he had curly hair, which is still a problem for him. Moez has found the will to keep going even though he knows he will never have the hair of his idol Taylor Hanson.
Moez is 39 years old now. People who are obviously jealous tell me that he acts like a rock star. Moez seems happy to be famous. Unlike most hedge fund managers, there are a lot of pictures of his colorful life online. He has a Wikipedia page that is very detailed for someone of his stature. His 3-day interfaith wedding was written about in Toronto Life.
Interfaith dialogue is something I’m a big fan of, of course. One interesting thing to talk about could be why the family foundation gave $125,000 to the Aga Khan Foundation but only $5,000 to the United Jewish Appeal.
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