Peter Thiel is not a clown. The PayPal co-founder and Facebook investor sees right through bubbles and rampant, ongoing Wall Street fraud, or at least says he does. So why is he running a hedge fund, again?

The S&P 500 is up to 1,060 from a February low of 666. But Thiel's fund keeps getting battered. Clarium Capital is down 16 percent through mid-September, by the Wall Street Journal's calculation, and Thiel admits to the paper he's not eager to join the stock rally: "The recovery is not real... deep structural problems haven't been solved" said the entrepreneur, who in similar comments recently branded as "fraud" major tech research, as well as the dot-com boom in which he started his fortune-making company.

If Thiel's concerned with underlying fundamentals, it's odd he's placed himself in the corner of financial services most obsessed with market sentiment, expectations and gyrations: hedge funds, the sector given a face by Mad Money host and former hedgie James Cramer. If Thiel doesn't want to chase fake bubbles like a clown, perhaps it's time to leave the circus.

(Thiel pic via David Orban)

Send an email to Ryan Tate, the author of this post, at ryan@gawker.com.