Absolute Return on Paul Tudor Jones; Tudor Top Holdings: CISG, SPY, QQQQ, USO, PGNX

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Sep 02, 2010
GuruFocus has a chart recording Investment Guru Paul Tudor Jones’s reported equity holdings. It is not all the asset under his management, but the drop from over $16.1 billion to around $450 million suggests something extraordinary and possibly bad happened during the past three years.





Website http://www.absolutereturn-alpha.com has a cover story up on Paul Tudor Jones. It explains some of the dramatic drop in the chart above.


Excerpt:

Paul Tudor Jones II is the quintessential swashbuckling hedge fund manager—a former cotton trader who famously parlayed a bet on the 1987 stock market crash into an empire with $20.8 billion at its peak. In recent years he's become known as much for his philanthropic efforts with New York's Robin Hood Foundation as for his trading skills.


But shortly before his heir apparent, star equities manager Jim Pallotta, left the firm at the end of 2008, Jones watched most of his portfolio freeze up following Lehman's bankruptcy filing and decided it was time to play a larger role at the firm. He quickly stemmed the losses, threw up a gate to suspend redemptions, and then created a side pocket for his illiquid holdings.


"I'm never going to let this happen to me again," Jones was heard saying at the time.


The story covers recent returns and includes this tidbit from Tudor Jones (a reaction, one would imagine, to Druckenmiller’s recent announcement): “I have no intentions to retire in the next five years.”


Read the complete article here. (A free registration and login is required).


Separately, at the end of this article, I am attaching a commencement speech Paul Tudor Jones delivered to a 6th Grade class last year. In the interest of time, I quickly get to the point -- here is the concluding paragraph:
So here is the point: you are going to meet the dragon of failure in your life. You may not get into the school you want or you may get kicked out of the school you are in. You may get your heart broken by the girl of your dreams or God forbid, get into an accident beyond your control. But the point is that everything happens for a reason. At the time it may not be clear. And certainly the pain and the shame are going to be overwhelming and devastating. But just as sure as the sun comes up, there will come a time on the next day or the next week or the next year, when you will grab that sword and point it at that dragon and tell him, “Begone, dragon. Tarry with me and I will cut your head off. For I must find the destination God and life hold in store for me!”


Tudor’s recent activities is a good interpretation for what he said to the 6th graders.


GuruFocus tracks Tudor’s investment activities. Here are his top holdings as of June 30, 2010:


No. 1: CNinsure Inc. (CISG, Financial), Weightings: 8.01% - 1,411,156 Shares


Cninsure Inc. is a independent insurance agency and brokerage company operating in China. Cninsure Inc. has a market cap of $996 million; its shares were traded at around $21.83 with a P/E ratio of 19.8 and P/S ratio of 5.9. The dividend yield of Cninsure Inc. stocks is 1.1%.





No. 2: SPDR S&P 500 (SPY, Financial), Weightings: 5.65% - 250,000 Shares





No. 3: NASDAQ 100 Trust Series I (QQQQ, Financial), Weightings: 4.11% - 440,000 Shares





No. 4: United States Oil Fund, LP (USO, Financial), Weightings: 3.43% - 461,100 Shares


United States Oil Fund, Lp has a market cap of $2.06 billion; its shares were traded at around $32.95 .





No. 5: Progenics Pharmaceuticals Inc. (PGNX, Financial), Weightings: 2.61% - 2,342,388 Shares


Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company focusing on the development & commercialization of innovative therapeutic products to treat the unmet medical needs of patients with debilitating conditions and life-threatening diseases. Progenics Pharmaceuticals Inc. has a market cap of $135.4 million; its shares were traded at around $4.18 with and P/S ratio of 2.8. Progenics Pharmaceuticals Inc. had an annual average earning growth of 5.6% over the past 10 years.





No. 6: Spider Gold Shares (GLD), Weightings: 1.78% - 67,000 Shares


Street Tracks Gold Shares offer investors a new, innovative, relatively cost efficient and secure way to access the gold market. Spider Gold Shares has a market cap of $52.63 billion; its shares were traded at around $121.69 .





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Now something for fun:


16588637 Paul Tudor Jones Failure Speech June 2009