The pushback I get is, 'He's a hedge fund guy.' Full stop. Some places, that can be a badge of honor. In others, it's almost a term of derision.

I think a lot of times when people talk about merchants, it's almost a nostalgic look back at the time where the world moved at a very different pace, and information was very different.

balanced multi-manager hedge fund.

Trying to move the volume of products we're talking about from place to place to get it ultimately into the customer's hands, to price these items, to market these items, I think the retail business is incredibly complex. But if you get it right, it's a beautiful thing.

Some hedge fund managers have made big bucks trading oil futures - George Soros is one.

To operate a company of the size of Sears Holdings or Wal-Mart or Target or Home Depot or Lowe's, you need a combination of skills, and each of those skills needs to be sufficiently strong.