Is this money manager hedging more than bets?

Most millionaires would not let a 24-year-old not long out of college mess around with their money. But that's exactly what Stanley J. Kowalewski Jr., CEO of 15-month-old Phoenix Advisers, hopes some will do.

He's been talking up Phoenix Capital Offshore Fund Ltd. and Phoenix Capital Management LP, two hedge funds his Greensboro firm launched in January. Each began with $10 million, he says, but he hopes to have $1 billion under management within a year or so.

Kowalewski is a virtual unknown in the industry. The 6-8 Syracuse, N.Y., native started for Dartmouth's basketball team and graduated in 1994 with a degree in government. He joined financial consultants Waterfront International in Toronto, where he worked for a year.

It turns out his funds aren't the only things doing some hedging. Phoenix brochures tout him as "part of a management team" while at Waterfront and "a manager for a portion of the portfolio." It describes Waterfront as an "affiliate of Trout Trading Co." Kowalewski adds that he was on a four-man team that managed $300 million.

But Waterfront President Paul Eustace says he'd "have some concerns about the content of Stan's marketing material." Waterfront does contract research for Trout Trading Management Co., a well-known money manager in Bermuda, but is not a corporate affiliate. Kowalewski was a junior analyst, he says, and didn't allocate money. "I want to state categorically that Stan wasn't part of the management team." What's...