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Hedge fund trader Nick Gentile is starting to dread this time of year.
“October is a bad month for me,” the Staten Islander told The Post yesterday while taking a break from cleaning up debris outside his two-story Oakwood Beach house.
Hurricane Sandy pushed the nearby Raritan Bay into his home, flooding his basement with seven feet of water, ruining furniture and appliances and turning his life upside down.
Again.
“It was MF Global last year and Hurricane Sandy this year,” Gentile said, referring to the spectacular Halloween flame-out of the commodities broker last year that ruined his business. Sandy struck two days before the anniversary of the MF disaster, trashing his non-business world.
Gentile, co-founder of money-management firm Atlantic Capital Advisors, surveyed an entire neighborhood that has been destroyed.
The area is without power, the street is covered with sand and a huge pile of debris — furniture, household goods, tree limbs and even an errant street sign — sits beside his house.
“It looks like a bomb exploded, it’s so bad,” he said of his neighborhood.
As Sandy blew in from offshore, with gusts of wind hitting 80 mph, Gentile, his wife and two children, ages 11 and 9, were huddled up in the top story of their house.
Gentile estimates he has suffered some $25,000 worth of property damage that might not be covered by insurance.
It could take a month for the power to return, he said.
Meanwhile, he and his family have moved in with relatives.
It’s hard to believe that a year ago — nearly to the day — he woke up to learn that he was one of 21,000 MF Global customers blocked from tapping money in his account.
The firm, headed by former governor of New Jersey Jon Corzine, had, in short order, lost track of more than a billion dollars and had to file Chapter 11.
Hit with a double shot of bad luck, Gentile 45, doesn’t hesitate for a second when asked which disaster will have the longer-lasting impact on his life.
“MF Global,” he said.
“The material stuff can be replaced. The house can be rebuilt,” he said. “With MF Global, there was no insurance.”
Gentile isn’t talking about the $1.6 billion in missing funds, some 80 percent of which has been returned to customers. Rather, Gentile is referring to the fact that investors’ loss of confidence in the wake of MF Global has destroyed his business.
Before the brokerage firm’s collapse, Atlantic Capital Advisors, which kept its money with MF, was managing $100 million. Now it is down to less than $25 million — after customers, suddenly fearful about the safety of commodities trading, quickly withdrew their assets.
Gentile said he hasn’t drawn a paycheck in a year and has had to lay off staff.
The Wall Street veteran, husband and father can only shake his head.
“No one has confidence in our system anymore. I think that will have a longer lasting effect,” Gentile said.