The Rev. Emmanuel Lemelson, now serving in the small New Hampshire town of Keene, says he has a gift from God: a double visionary who works for the Greek Orthodox Church and is adept enough at investing to run his own hedge fund.
Lemelson said he asks his investors, who include 14 families, to follow two rules: Pray for the fund and disregard short-term performance, and most abide by and believe in him, especially as he outperformed market indicators until one of his bets, Apple, began taking hits.
His method: pray for the fund and disregard short-term performance. “I don’t know everything he invests in, and I don’t want to know,” Bob Resinger, a retired telecommunications manager and investor in the fund, said in a Wall Street Journal feature. He said he trusts Mr. Lemelson because of “what he stands for.”
Lemelson is a bit of an enigma in the community and the Archdiocese of Boston said he’s not fully sanctioned. “He doesn’t belong to us,” Chancellor Theodore Barbas told the paper although he said Lemelson has been allowed to fill in temporarily at New England Greek churches.
The Saint George Greek Orthodox Church in Keene has hosted Rev. Lemelson on and off for a few months. Until recently, parishioners were mostly confused as to how exactly the priest spends his spare time.
“What does he do?” asked Maria Bradshaw, a 55-year-old homemaker, shortly after Mr. Lemelson, clad in a gold robe, passed out Antidotum, or blessed bread, at the front of the congregation. She searched for the right word to describe a rumor she’d heard. “Capital?”
What he does is invest, and well. “My whole life I always knew things before they happened. I guess it’s just a gift from God,” said Lemelson, 39 years old.
His Amvona Fund, with $20 million in assets, barely registers in the largely unregulated hedge fund world but it has earned him millions. His rules include listening to investor big shots like Warren Buffet who live by a key principle: don’t overpay.
For investing client funds, Lemelson gets a 25 percent performance fee, far above what others charge but his disciples believe in his instinct and God and gut and that he asks them to pray, a dubious tactic say critics who argue a Man of the Cloth shouldn’t look to get rich quick.
Lemelson bets on relatively unknown individual stocks rising, like seismic-equipment-technology maker Geospace Technologies Corp. and has done well enough to show returns of 150 percent through the middle of this year before a losing run with Apple.
He was Gregory Lemelson to a Jewish father and Christian mother. Inspired by a college professor who was a priest, he attended seminary at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology to become a priest and was ordained by a Turkish Archbishop who is one of his investors and believers.
IN CASH HE TRUSTS
Some don’t. “He’s not paying much attention to the Fathers of the Church, all of whom said it was very dangerous to be rich,” Vanderbilt Divinity School professor Douglas Meeks, a Methodist minister told the Journal. “He shouldn’t trade on his priestly or pastoral position.”
Lemelson is one rich minister. He is selling off a custom-built 7,000-square foot suburban Boston mansion after a five-year legal fight over the mortgage. His wife makes the 90-minute drive to Keene in a white Cadillac Escalade sport-utility vehicle. He collects motorcycles. He doesn’t follow up if the church forgets to pay his $300 weekly honorarium every so often.
“Let’s not be poor because we’re pretending to be pious, when we really just couldn’t figure out how to make a better living,” he told the paper, not hiding his other true ambition.
Before ordination, he ran a website, also called Amvona, selling discount photography equipment manufactured in China. Amvona was sued in 2004 for copying a competitor’s patents; two years later, Amvona accepted an offer of judgment against it and paid to end the case, court documents show.
Greek Orthodox priests are allowed to be married and hold secondary jobs. Lemelson, who is married with four children, said he couldn’t afford to stay in the clergy without his hedge-fund gig. He recalled the moment when he became serious about investing.
“I said, ‘They are going to have to bar me from the securities markets, because I would make too much money,’” he said. He paused. “I’m not humble. I wish I were.”
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