Firm:
Osbon Capital Management, LLC
Job Title:
Partner, Investment Advisor
Biography:
Max Osbon, Partner of Osbon Capital Management, shares responsibility with his partner, John, for all investment decisions including security selection, allocation, and risk assessment for clients on a case-by-case custom basis. Osbon Capital is 100% owned by the Osbon family and is its sole investment vehicle.
Max earned full Osbon Capital partnership status in 2014 with the goal of building it for the next generation.
Previously, he worked for Bloomberg L.P. in NYC leading the coverage of the Goldman Sachs account. He left voluntarily after three years for a self funded six month trip in the southern hemisphere, writing neverinamerica.com along the way.
Max Osbon began contributing to Osbon Capital in 2007 as a sophomore in college, doing analysis and special projects. He proceeded by turning an internship at Bloomberg into subsequent employment and a quick advancement to a competitive sales position. A landmark event for Osbon Capital occurred when Max Osbon joined Osbon Capital as a partner in 2013.
He has a B.S. in mathematics and a B.A. in finance from Santa Clara University, graduating top in his class by number of class credits.
Max participates annually in the Wall Street Decathlon, benefiting Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research. He is a Young Partner of Boston Ballet with a focus on event planning and audience building for that organization. Previous volunteer activities have included Advisory Board member for the Design Museum of Boston, and fundraising for the Boys & Girls Club of Boston.
Max resides in the Fort Point area in Boston.
Education:
BA, BS, Finance and Mathematics , Santa Clara University
CRD Number:
6244193
Mutual funds allow you to invest in a basket of publicly traded securities run by an investment manager. In some rare cases they can own private placements in illiquid companies, but for the most part, they are responsible for selecting publicly traded securities, stock, bonds, etc. You can very easily buy mutual funds in a brokerage or retirement account. Fees are usually around 1%.
Hedge funds are private investment companies for accredited ($1M+ net worth) investors. Hedge funds can own anything, public securities, private securities, mines in Chile, real estate, even bitcoins, etc. You can't buy into a hedge fund via a brokerage or retirement account and most won't accept an investment of less than $250,000 to start. Most hedge funds are short term profit focused which can cause large tax bills for individual investors, when all of the gains are short term capital gains, personal tax rates are much higher. Hedge funds can be much better for institutional investors because they don't have to pay short term capital gains taxes. Fees are usually 2% on assets and 20% of performance.
A 401(k) comes from your employer. Typically, you have to pick investments from a narrow list of choices. The best ones have an employee matching program where the company will match what you put in. Always take the match, it's free money.
An IRA is completely independent. You can open them yourself for free and you can decide from thousands of securities how you would like to invest. Usually when you leave a company, you "rollover" your 401(k) into an IRA.
Both are tax-deferred retirement accounts, meaning you can invest tax-free until you take it out after age 59 1/2.
No. You have to do a new transaction. Each trade/transaction is called a "tax lot", or just "lot".
In your calculations, blend all of your transactions together to get an average cost basis (the average of what you paid). The reason you can't "add value" to an open trade is you can't just buy more at the original price you paid. You have to buy at the updated prices available to you now.
Supply and demand. Closed-end funds have a fixed supply. When demand for these funds rises, the assets can trade at a premium (above their net asset value). When demand falls, the funds can trade at a discount (below their net asset value). There are some closed-end funds (CEFs) that always trade at a discount. Not all CEFs that trade at a discount are a good buy opportunity.
Open-end mutual funds (and ETFs) have a flexible supply. In this case, shares are created and redeemed to match demand. Open-end mutual funds can also trade above and below NAVs - but usually just for a very short period.
If you're going to risk losing money experimenting and testing the market in an effort to build experience... it's better to do it with a few thousand instead of a few hundred thousand.
Your biggest risk is losing more than you put in and that should absolutely be avoided when you're getting started. Losing 100% is bad, but losing so much that you now owe more money than you started with is potentially very damaging. I would recommend against borrowing to invest until you have experience under your belt, other friends who work at hedge funds and trading desks, etc.
You can gain leverage on your returns without borrowing money by buying out of the money call and put options. If you don't know what that means, you definitely should read Nassim Talib's trilogy, "Fooled by Randomness", "The Black Swan", and "Antifragile". Do that before you jump into leveraged investing. Good luck!