New york "tiger" becomes "cat"
Tiger Fund Announces Closure
The biggest news on Wall Street recently is the bankruptcy of Tiger Fund, the second largest hedge fund in the United States. Unlike the bankruptcy of 1998 Long-term Capital Management Company, the bankruptcy of Tiger Fund did not cause the shock of Wall Street stock market, let alone the concern of the Federal Reserve. This is because hedge funds are not as good as before, and tiger funds have quietly sold their stocks a few months ago. By the time the news of the closure was announced, the impact of the news on the market was already a spent force.
The decline of Tiger Fund began in June last year. At that time, Tiger Fund 1999 was held in new york Plaza Hotel. Faced with such poor fund performance, institutional investors are like ants in your pants. Two of them questioned Julian Robertson, the head of Tiger Fund, for 15 minutes, which made Robertson unable to step down. From this day on, Robertson had to consider his own way out. Faced with the demand of a large number of investors to redeem their funds, Tiger Fund made a mandatory provision to change the redemption period from quarterly to half a year from April 2000, but all this failed to prevent investors from withdrawing their funds. In February this year, Robertson told People for the first time that he failed to seriously consider investing in crazy high-tech stocks, but he did not intend to try it in the future. After returning home, he held a series of high-level meetings. On March 29th, just as the new regulations were about to take effect, Robertson announced the dissolution of Tiger Fund.
It has been raining for those days.
Park Avenue in Manhattan Island, new york is a new "Wall Street", where there are world-class banks with big signs such as Chase and Citigroup, as well as large and small hedge fund companies that don't hang up their signs and hide their strength, but also play an important role in the world financial market. The headquarters of Tiger Fund Management Company is located here. In addition, it has regional offices in London and Tokyo.
Tiger Fund is second only to Soros's Quantum Fund, and Robertson is 67 years old. He came from North Carolina and worked as a stockbroker in a company at the age of 25. Later, he moved to New Zealand and began his dream of writing books for a living. But less than a year later, he moved back to the United States and returned to his old job. Because of his outstanding performance, he enjoys the reputation of "star broker" on Wall Street. Successful Robertson is not satisfied with being a stock trader in other people's companies. 1980, he raised $8 million to set up his own company in new york and named it Tiger Fund Management Company, of which $2 million was from his own pocket.
Robertson is famous for his selection of "traditional value" stocks, and occasionally tries his hand in the bond and foreign exchange markets. The so-called "value-oriented" stocks refer to traditional industry stocks with good profit prospects and undervalued by the market. Tiger Fund only had poor performance in 1985 and 1994. In other years, it was "the legendary swordsman", which made it famous. Rich people came to the door to join in, which made the fund scale of Tiger Fund expand rapidly. At the beginning of 1998, Tiger Fund created a glorious history, with funds under management as high as $22 billion.
Hedge funds are elusive, and with their strong capital strength, they can have a huge pulling effect on the stock market, bond market and foreign exchange market. Soros's quantum fund has made many countries see the power of "financial giants", and the tiger fund has also been blacklisted by financial authorities in many countries. In order to show his strength, Robertson gave his sub-funds very wild names, such as Tiger Fund, Jaguar Fund, Cougar Fund, Lion Fund and other famous funds. Although the name and courage were daunting, it didn't make Tiger Fund stand the setback of 1998.
Had a drink in Russia.
Like long-term capital management company, Robertson was also hit by the Russian debt crisis in 1998, and lost1600 million dollars in the Russian market overnight. The foreign exchange speculation of that year did not bring much good luck to Robertson. In August of the year before last, the exchange rate of the Japanese yen against the US dollar once fell to 147 1. Tiger Fund took the opportunity to speculate and sold the yen in a big way, hoping to break through the mark of 1 USD to 150 yen in one fell swoop and reap huge profits. However, in the absence of any improvement in the Japanese economy, the yen has done the opposite. In just two months, it soared to 1 USD 1 15 yen, which caused the Tiger Fund to lose a huge sum of $2 billion.
Tiger funds planted in the hands of Japanese yen will never touch the foreign exchange market again. However, Robertson didn't stop there. He invested his money in Japanese stocks. When the Nikkei index rose sharply last year, he shorted Japanese stocks, hoping to make a big profit when Japanese stocks fell sharply. However, he "stole a handful of rice before he could do it", and the trend of the Nikkei once again reversed in the direction predicted by Robertson. At the same time, the performance of Tiger Fund in domestic stock investment in the United States is also extremely unsatisfactory. For example, the company holds a 65,438+05% stake in American Airlines, but the stock has dropped from a high price of $59 per share in May last year to $25 per share last Wednesday. In addition, Tiger Fund's shares in the joint asset management company also performed poorly.
According to informed sources, Tiger Fund lost 18.64% in 1999, lost 15.8% by the end of February this year, lost 3% in March, and accumulated losses exceeded 30%. According to the regulations of hedge funds, fund managers can only charge fund management fees after making up for these losses. In other words, he must make the profit rate reach 85% in the remaining time before he can afford the bonus and various expenses of the department manager. Robertson, exhausted physically and mentally, felt overwhelmed. There seems to be only one way before him: investing in technology stocks, because the Nasdaq index rose by 86% at 1999, but Robertson has always been good at investing in "value-oriented" stocks, and his worst field is high-tech stocks. Even in today's hot technology stocks, Tiger Fund only owns a few stocks such as Microsoft, Intel and Samsung Electronics.
Stick to your own opinions and take the old route in investment.
Robertson is famous for his stubborn personality. An employee who asked not to be named said that Robertson was so convinced of his "value-oriented" investment strategy that we made mistakes for too long. Due to the poor performance of Tiger Fund in recent two years, only $ 1999 is left. When the closure was announced, the fund had only $6.5 billion left. Among them, $6543.8+$50 million belongs to Robertson's private property.
Robertson predicted that the collapse of technology stocks would be the worst page of the US stock market, and "value-oriented" stocks would eventually be favored by investors, but they would be finished before this time. In an interview with reporters, Robertson continued to praise the investment value of "value stocks" and dismissed the behavior of investors away from "value stocks" as irrational. He claimed that he didn't regret it, saying that there was no need to take investors' money to risk investing in high-tech stocks he didn't understand. Robertson also announced that 85% of the company's 200 employees will be fired in mid-April, leaving only five or six analysts to help him manage the remaining stocks and choose the right time until the company completely stops operating. Several fund managers of the company will be transferred to another hedge fund management company.
Throughout Robertson's investment performance in the past 20 years, the average annual profit of Tiger Fund Company is as high as 25%. In other words, the investment at that time was $654.38+million, and now it has become $8 million. Robertson undoubtedly created a miracle on Wall Street. However, the failure of these two years has caused this "stock god" to lose his life. The stock market is like a casino, and the Nasdaq stock market is gambling more and more. There is no ever-victorious general here. Druckenmiller, a partner of Soros Fund, said, "This is not a sad day. He looks like a golfer. He hit the rotten hand with his last shot, but he won the whole championship. " .
"Value-oriented" stocks have recently regained people's favor, but Robertson doesn't have enough money to keep this day. Robertson almost cried at a party held last Tuesday, and the man1.83m had to admit his failure.