Spork, 57, expounds not like a shareholder activist, nor a foreign policy wonk, but like someone born to be a hedge fund manager. "I’ve been trading stocks since the age of 15, and I was doing technical analysis and trading my own portfolio all the way through university," he says. But at one point Spork took a detour and became a dentist. "I got caught up in the competition and the prestige of getting into dentistry. However, I loved investing so much that I stayed with it, learning about it and trading and analyzing it."

His fascination with trading led him to buy his own seat on the Toronto Futures Exchange, where he spent a large part of the 1980s as a floor trader when he wasn’t busy with his dental practice. "That was the Wild West of trading, and people really lived and died by their abilities," he says. Many of the most volatile names on the exchange were mining and other commodity-related companies, so Spork started to develop an expertise in analyzing these firms. He gained more experience by moving to off-floor trading, where he began to take positions in foreign exchange, commodity futures, index futures, options and equities. In 2003, he received his Canadian Investment Management designation.

Spork looks for companies that he believes will vastly outperform. He is generally bullish on uranium. Last year he met with the management of a little-known Toronto-based company called Yukon Resources (now Uranium Star), a uranium exploration company with assets in Quebec, Arizona and Finland. Their capabilities impressed him, and in September he negotiated taking a private placement in the company at 50 cents per share—while the company was trading around 75 cents. As part of the deal, Spork also bought options to increase his stake. As of late March, Uranium Star was trading at $1.50 per share, tripling Sextant’s cash position in just six months. Spork says the value of his options has increased 400 percent.

In a great burst of optimism, Spork opened two new funds last November. One is an offshore version of the metals fund available to investors outside Canada, the other a fund that seeks opportunities in the global water industry. Spork does not have deep knowledge of the water industry, but he surrounds himself with a board of experts. Initially, the water fund will primarily take long-equity positions in companies involved in the exploration, filtering, monitoring, distribution and treatment of water, and the technology and services related to water consumption, again with a focus on PIPE offerings.

The way Spork sees it, starting a fund without a track record is an all-or-nothing effort. "If your returns are mediocre for the first year, if you are down for the year, or you have a very big draw-down, you are out of business," he says. But even if the fund enjoys triple-digit returns, the business will bleed several million dollars of overhead in the first few years. Spork believes starting as a garage entrepreneur is not an option; hedge fund managers need a solid image to build credibility. His firm has a staff of 10 that includes Robert Levack, a fund manager with 20 years’ experience, as portfolio manager and chief compliance officer, and Patrick Raffalovich, a former broker who previously ran his own technical analysis firm, as a senior strategist and manager of technical research. Though Spork’s phones have been ringing much more often since the Globe & Mail ranking appeared, he says he doesn’t feel he has reached "the magic inflexion point where money starts chasing you."

Mouthpieces and Masterminds
Certainly little chance for glory exists among hedge fund founders like Spork. They must live with constant risk that they will go long with the wrong default swap and wake up one morning with investors baying at the door. Fulfilling a lifelong goal and earning the 2-and-20 fees from outside investors present some incentives. But perhaps more important, hedge fund founders prevent their wealth from being eroded by not paying these fees to others.