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Fortune magazine
Feb 21, 2033
It
turns out Mike Derjerlain-Reet-Swenson-Chang doesn't much care about celebrities. "Five
years ago, I knew nothing," he says. "Sure, I had a subscription to Star magazine, but that was only because I didn't have time to read the front page
of the New York Times every day, and I didn't want to seem like an idiot."
Derjerlain's interest was simply saving his ass. He came
up with Franklin Templeton's Celebrity Fund — a portfolio consisting solely
of used celebrity items — because it couldn't be indexed. "We were
getting slaughtered, us fund managers," he said over a plain foamy blended
mixed organic. "You came up with the craziest portfolio you could think
of [Derjerlain spent two years running Templeton's derivative of Venezuelan plastic
surgery malpractice insurance], and, whatever it was, within two months Fidelity
and Vanguard had an index fund that undercut your costs and kicked your ass.
It's humiliating getting beaten by a computer program. Hell, it's why Kasparov
killed himself. It was either that or figuring out that no matter how famous
you are for playing chess, it ain't going to get you laid." For a guy who
spends his days trying to coax Karate Lohan into selling the kiddie ballet shoes
her mom bought her, Derjerlain still has the sense of humor of an old-school
trader.
Though many see Derjerlain as the executioner of Wall
Street — turning it from a number-crunching, testosterone-fueled Gordon Gekko
den to just one more female-dominated, intuition-driven collaborative business — he
sees himself as a savior from the place's indexing formulas. "The writing
was on the wall, sensei. We were disappearing. Like the search engine guys of
the '20s, the rappers of the '10s, the American car companies of the '00s. It was over."
He got the idea for the Celebrity Fund — which
closed last November at $200 billion — from a Wall Street Journal story
in January of 2029 which reported that intimate items from celebrities had risen
in value more than the rupee in the previous five years: "Smart parents,
including the Hanson-Hernandez-Wu-Stinkels of Woodside, have diversified part
of their children's college fund, in items like the thong Dakota Fanning wore
in her first accidentally released sex video (purchased in 2026 by Dave Hanson-Hernandez-Wu-Stinkel
for $6,400, now valued at $20,000), and even the handcrafted, shogun-era
reproduction sword Michael Jackson used to attempt seppuku (purchased
by Mr. Hanson in October 2029 for $70,000 already worth $100,000) before Mr. Jackson's
pet monkey stopped him, put the sword away in a safe place and then shot him
with a gun (which Mr. Hanson got outbid on by the PETA party, which paid $180,000)."
"The first item I bought for the fund," Derjerlain
says, "was the pair of sunglasses worn by that woman who was the first model
They can make up to $400,000 a year, depending on bonuses, which are often paid out in celebrity undergarments. |
on a billboard advertisement featuring a money shot. Remember when that
was a controversy?" Within a year, Morningstar had given his fund five stars,
and Harvard became a major investor — a full year before they started their
Celebrity Culture department.
At the time Templeton partner James Voyles-Crane-Gorker-Oakaku
thought Derjerlain was wasting his time with a obscure niche fund for risk takers,
like real estate. "I knew he was onto something big when James Cameron decided
to make Titanic 2 just so Mikey could buy up all the costumes. I mean, there
was no other point to that movie. They spent the first hour explaining how an
iceberg could still exist today. But the costumes were huge."
The real breakthrough came with Derjerlain figured out
that every item needed DNA verification. The buying and selling — which
can amount to 1,200 transactions a day — is all done on eBay by a team
of 100 specialists, mostly women in their late 40s who work at home. They can
make up to $400,000 a year, depending on bonuses, which are often paid out
in celebrity undergarments.
Derjerlain is sure the celebrity investment field will
continue to grow. Fifty years ago, he points out, celebrities only did three
things: act, sing and play sports. "Before Bob Vila, there wasn't a single
celebrity handyman. Crazy, right? And before Julia Child, chefs weren't famous.
Before Hsu Wang, no kid had a poster in her room of a computer-chip engineer.
Before 2020, the average person couldn't name a single font maker, and those
people used their names for the fonts. That generation had no information. People — educated
people — didn't even know what a gaffer did, much less name one."
That was a time when a really enterprising celebrity
didn't do more than write a children's book, open a restaurant, paint and run
a used-car dealership. "Things have changed so much. Why can't a chef act?
Why can't a multi-national CEO be on the karaoke circuit? Can an ultimate fighter
knit on a professional level? I think Tank Boutros-Thant-Singer-Wishman answered
that."
By next year, you won't be doing anything that isn't celebrity branded. |
Investment potential was high because celebrity had infiltrated the culture on a deeply personal level. A 2029
Derjerlain poll showed that 62 percent of Americans had met at least
one celebrity, and 97 percent had one as a MySpace friend they regularly messaged. "Think
about this: Name a major American city without a washed-up celebrity mayor. That's
because when they hit the E List and stop being able to get reservations at Wolfgang
Puck's Tofuria, they have to move somewhere people still care about them. And
if they weren't big-time, you can rule out the entire West and Northeast," Derjerlain
said. "Right now Cincinnati has seven deputy mayors, six of whom were former
American Idols. That place is a craphole."
By next year, Derjerlain predicts, you won't be doing
anything that isn't celebrity branded. "Why are you buying hydrogen at Exxon
when you could be filling up at Tom Hanks and Son? Why wouldn't you want your
hydrogen choice to say something about who you are?"
For now, Derjerlain, famous for his playboy lifestyle,
including a penthouse in Spanish Harlem and a mansion in Encino, is elusive about
his next fund. "It's futures agenting," he explains. "I buy a
toque from a hot chef in Ghana, I move him to New York and, if I got it right,
that toque goes from $100 to $20,000. Only I have 400 of his toques. As long
as I'm watching him, that guy doesn't use a toque twice."
And even if this kind of speculation backfires,
Derjerlain doesn't seem worried about finding a way to make money. Now, he's famous.
n°
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
| Joel Stein is a columnist for Time magazine.
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©2006 Joel Stein and Nerve.com
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