Julian Robertson is considered the father of hedge fund. He launched his firm Tiger Management in 1980 with $8 million, and turned it into over $22 billion in the late 1990s. Robertson had the best hedge fund record throughout the 1980s and 1990s. It is reported that the compound rate of return to his investors was 32%. During his active years, he was considered to be the "Wizard of Wall Street." His hedge fund, Tiger Management, became the world's largest fund, which peaked at over $23 billion invested.
He lost 4% in 1998 and 19% in 1999 as rival investors were riding the dot-com bubble to spectacular returns. He shut down his fund.
Today Tiger Management only manages fund from internal investment, mainly Mr. Robertson’s own money.
Besides his investment record, Mr. Robertson also mentored a group of young hedge fund managers, known as the "Tiger Cubs." A number of them became extremely successful hedge fund managers in their own right, including John Griffin of Blue Ridge Capital, Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital, Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global, and Steve Mandel of Lone Pine Capital. They are also included in our List of Gurus.
Investing Philosophy
Mr. Robertson invests with long-short strategies. These are some of his quotes:
"Our mandate is to find the 200 best companies in the world and invest in them, and find the 200 worst companies in the world and go short on them. If the 200 best don't do better than the 200 worst, you should probably be in another business."
"When Robertson is convinced that he is right," a former Tiger executive notes, "Julian bets the farm."
"Hear a [stock] story, analyze and buy aggressively if it feels right."
This is the Q1 portfolio update for legendary hedge fund manager Julian Robertson at Tiger Management. The portfolio is primarily Mr. Robertson’s personal investment. Read more...
I honestly don’t know how you hedge fund managers do it. Investing is hard enough. Having to invest with the fickle nature of your fund’s investors in mind must be exponentially difficult. Read more...
The Wall Street Tiger is back! More than ten years after closing Tiger Management LLC, Julian Robertson has opened the Tiger Accelerator Fund to seed the enterprises of young hedge fund talent. One such talent is his own heir apparent: the young Alexander Robertson. Read more...
Google (GOOG), the Internet search engine, is generating revenue with only the users’ clicks or the advertising related to their searches. Indeed, this activity represents 80% of its revenues. The remaining revenue is driven by advertising that Google places in other companies' websites, and by smaller initiatives. Read more...
Julian H. Robertson Jr. is an American former hedge fund manager. He was born in Salisbury, North Carolina in 1932. Robertson graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in business administration in 1955. After a stint in the Navy, he joined Kidder, Peabody & Co. in New York in 1957 and, over a twenty year career, became one of the firm's top producing stockbrokers. Robertson founded the investment firm Tiger Management Corp., one of the earliest hedge funds in 1980 with $8 million start-up capital that became over $22 billion in the late 1990s. Quick success was also followed by a fast downward spiral of investor withdrawals that ended with the fund closing in 2000. Now retired, Robertson invests directly in other hedge funds, most run by former employees of Robertson's defunct hedge fund company. He is active in philanthropy and supporting the resolution of environmental issues.
Subsequently, he became head of Kidder Peabody's money management subsidiary, Webster Management Corporation. In 1993, his compensation and share of Tiger's gain exceeded $300 million. His 2003 estimated net worth was over $400 million, and in March 2011 it was estimated by Forbes at $2.3 billion, a slight increase from the $2.2 billion estimated the previous year. Robertson said in 2008 that he shorted subprime securities and made money through credit default swaps. The following year, according to Forbes, Robertson's return on his $200-million personal trading account was 150 percent.
Year after year of brilliant returns turned a reported $8 million investment in 1980 into $7.2 billion in 1996. During the later part of this period, Robertson was the reigning titan of the world's hedge funds. At his peak, no one could best him for sheer stock-picking acumen. Investors, at a required minimum initial investment of $5 million, flocked into his six hedge funds. In the late 1990s, Robertson agonized over the tech-stock craze and, while avoiding what he considered to be "irrational" investing, the TMG funds missed out on any participation on the big gains of the sector. The gradual demise of Tiger from 1998 to 2000, when all its funds were closed, was reflected in the plunge in assets under management from a peak of $22 billion in assets in 1998 to a closing value of $6 billion. Poor stock picking and large, misplaced bets on risky market trades are usually cited as the cause of Robertson's downfall. However, it is felt by many objective observers that high-level executive defections from TMG's management, as well as Robertson's autocratic managerial style and notorious temper, eventually took their toll on the firm's performance. Tiger's largest equity holding at that time was U.S. Airways, whose troubles dragged down the value of his holdings. After closing his fund in 2000, Robertson kept his hand in the hedge fund business by supporting and financing upcoming hedge fund managers, in return for a stake in their fund management companies. Apart from those, many of the analysts and managers Robertson employed and mentored at Tiger Management went out on their own and are now running some of the best-known hedge fund firms, called "Tiger Cubs".
Robertson has been quoted as saying "our mandate is to find the 200 best companies in the world and invest in them, and find the 200 worst companies in the world and go short on them. If the 200 best don't do better than the 200 worst, you should probably be in another business. He is very private on his investments. In TMG, Robertson would get input from his analysts and make all the investment decisions. It is said though that Robertson was a macro trader, and often rode worldwide trends. His investment style, about which there is very little written, consisted of a "smart idea, grounded on exhaustive research, followed by a big bet." Not exactly a practical framework that would work for the general investing public.
We all know that Warren Buffett has famously avoided investing in the technology sector. I think it actually would be fair to say that Buffett's investing style doesn't work in the technology sector. More...
U.S. markets had a small rebound Tuesday after the 1% pullback on Monday. Overall, the markets didn’t have much reaction to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s appearance before congress. The media will now focus its attention on the upcoming sequester which is set to kick in on Friday. In the meantime, earnings season continues with several retailers reporting and set to report. More...
Julian Robertson is considered the father of hedge funds. He started his hedge fund Tiger Management in 1980 with $8 million, and built the fund all the way to $22 billion in the late 1990s. But his investing philosophy prevented him from participating the tech bubble. He kept losing money in and dissolved his fund. Mr. Robertson also mentored a group of young hedge fund managers, known as the "Tiger Cubs." A number of them became extremely successful hedge fund managers in their own right, including John Griffin of Blue Ridge Capital, Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital, Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global, and Steve Mandel of Lone Pine Capital. They are also included in our List of Gurus. More...
Robertson actually thinks that the economy is doing pretty well and that many investors are too worried about Europe and other macro issues. He thinks that too many investors have their portfolios positioned for disaster: More...
Julian Robertson, founder of Tiger Management, appeared on "Bloomberg Surveillance" with Tom Keene and Sara Eisen this morning, saying that hedge funds that have positioned themselves for a "black swan event" are making a "mistake." More...
Tiger Management's Julian Robertson advises buying good companies such as Apple (AAPL) amid macroeconomic issues and says it's a great time for hedge funds. He also comments on Facebook (FB): More...
There are many legendary billionaires who have made fortunes from the stock trading world. They remain billionaires because their stock trading principles have always worked for them, at least most of the time. Imagine knowing and keying into their guiding principles and you are good to go. Mentioning that wealthy stock traders and reputable hedge funds own Apple (AAPL) stocks is simply a formality. Apple is an incredible tech stock that has gone upswing by about 62 percent on a year-to-year-to-date basis. Apple is a winner many value investors love to own – it recently declared the world’s second-biggest quarterly dividend payouts which the company says will continue to define the tech firm’s generosity. Legendary investors also love Amazon (AMZN), Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) and many other tech stocks relatively unknown to many value investors but which some billionaires have in their stock investment portfolios. More...
Julian Robertson is considered the father of hedge funds. He started his hedge fund Tiger Management in 1980 with $8 million, and built the fund all the way to $22 billion in the late 1990s. But his investing philosophy prevented him from participating the tech bubble. He kept losing money in and dissolved his fund. Mr. Robertson also mentored a group of young hedge fund managers, known as the "Tiger Cubs." A number of them became extremely successful hedge fund managers in their own right, including John Griffin of Blue Ridge Capital, Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital, Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global, and Steve Mandel of Lone Pine Capital. They are also included in our List of Gurus. More...
Legendary Julian Robertson (the founder of Tiger Management) on his outstanding talent to recognize and identify hedge fund talent. How does he select his "Tiger Cubs" (or to be precise: Tiger Seeds) back then, and today? Hear Robertson explain what it takes to be a successful hedge fund manager today. More...
JULIAN ROBERTSON, TIGER MANAGEMENT, TIGER CUBS, VALUE INVESTING, VALUE INVESTORS, RATIONALE INVESTING
Julian Robertson essentially founded the hedge fund industry when he opened his firm, Tiger Global Management. In the following interview, he weighs in on the hedge fund industry, investment strategy and the state of the world economy: More...
Julian Robertson’s top first-quarter new buys are: HCA Holdings (HCA), Starbucks Corp. (SBUX), Sherwin William (SHW), Verisign Inc. (VRSN) and XPO Logistics (XPO). More...
Today we have updated portfolios of almost all the Gurus we track. We will write a series of articles discussing the trends we observe. In this article we want to share with you about Apple (AAPL), the most storied stock and the most valuable company on earth. More...
Legendary investor Julian Robertson is often considered the inventor of the hedge fund. The billionaire and Tiger Management CEO discusses his reasons for donating more than $1.25 million to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign: More...
Julian Robertson of Tiger Management is considered the father of modern hedge funds. Julian Hart Robertson Jr. built his Tiger Management from $8.8 million under his management in 1980 to more than $21 billion in 2000. He reportedly delivered a stellar 28% performance net to investors for 20 years. During the internet bubble in 2000, his funds suffered setbacks due to leveraged shorting of technology stocks and the underperformance of value picks. Haunted by investor redemptions and rocketing technology sector, Robertson decided to return public money to his investors. Ironically, right after the scale back, his style of value investing staged a strong come-back. More...
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