Last October, James Perkins Jr., the manager of New York–based Thrasher hedge fund, embarked on an unusual education campaign to reach out to young investors. He ventured into various Times Square bars dressed in chrome sneakers, white jeans and a black blazer to promote his GendeX Fund, a mutual fund aimed at Americans born between the mid-1960s and the late ’70s. The fund sought to appeal to Generation X tastes by investing in a portfolio of 80 to 100 stocks — mostly clothing retailers, mobile phone manufacturers and automakers. But Perkins, a wiry 30-year-old Yale University graduate, learned how tough it can be to sell a new fund in a market downturn. GendeX outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500 index by 30 basis points from January to July, but that still left the fund down a hefty 12.4 percent. With only $150,000 in assets, Perkins pulled the plug last month and began returning money to investors. “The timing was bad,” he says.
