James Bell

James Bell is a Consultant and Director of Hedge Fund Research at Crewcial Partners LLC, the New York–based investment advisory and OCIO firm that was known as Colonial Consulting until it rebranded to Crewcial Partners on October 16, 2020. The firm was founded in 1980 and specializes in customized investment advice for endowments, foundations, and other non-profit institutions, advising on roughly $26–28 billion in assets across a boutique team of about 60 professionals.

Bell joined the firm (then Colonial Consulting) in 2008 and brings roughly twenty years of experience in hedge fund investing. Before Crewcial, he worked as an analyst at Muirfield Capital Management, Plus Fund Group, and IMM. Within Crewcial he sits on a ~20-person integrated research team that operates on a generalist model, encouraging cross-asset-class collaboration rather than siloed coverage; Bell leads the underwriting of the firm's hedge fund portfolio for client accounts, regularly meeting with hedge fund managers to evaluate strategies and run manager searches.

Bell holds a degree in Economics from the University of Chicago and is a CFA charter holder. Originally from upstate New York and born outside Chicago, he lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

• "Excellence is rare." Bell's core belief is that most managers do not add value, so the job is to identify the small minority with a genuinely differentiated viewpoint and edge.
• People first — the "4 Ps." Crewcial evaluates managers on *people, process, performance, and philosophy*, with people paramount: strong investment temperament, competitive drive, and deep passion for investing.
• Concentration over closet-indexing. He favors "fundamentally driven managers that are price sensitive" running focused, concentrated portfolios that express conviction — not diversified vehicles that hug a benchmark.
• Risk = permanent loss of capital. Bell defines risk as "permanent impairment, a permanent loss of capital" rather than volatility, managing it through manager sizing and portfolio balance.
• Portfolio shape. Roughly 75% equity-oriented (mainly long/short equity) and 25% absolute-return strategies; increasing focus on credit managers as interest rates rose.
• Diverse and emerging managers. A stated priority is backing diverse-owned and emerging/early-stage managers — noting that under 2% of industry assets are managed by diverse-owned firms — consistent with Crewcial's firm-wide emphasis on diversity as an alpha source.