In 1993, John Meriwether, head of the "legendary" fixed income arbitrage team at Salmon Brothers, was forced to resign his position and so launched the hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management. (A hedge fund is a type of mutual fund designed to avoid as much regulation as possible by limiting its clientele to the very wealthy.) Other Salomon traders, notable for profiting on the stock market crash of 1987, joined the new firm as did the two economists and Nobel laureates, Robert Merton and Myron Scholes. Within a few months LTCM had raised $1.25 billion with which to invest and by the end of 1997 had $7.5 billion in assets under management, including at least $700 million (1) of the partners' own money.