Billionaire investor Julian Robert-son closed the doors of Tiger Management LLC early last year after losing half his money in 18 months. This year, his fund's alumni have vindicated his brand of stock picking.
Managers who came out of Tiger in the last few years are posting some of the best returns among stock hedge funds, as falling shares make value investing -- buying shares seen as inexpensive relative to the market -- profitable again. Two of them, Andreas Halvorsen and Philippe Laffont, have even made money so far this month as the market's slump deepened following last week's terrorist attacks on the US.
"Julian tried to instill the fact that if you are properly hedged and if you pick the right stocks, long and short, you should be able to make money no matter what the stock market does,'' said Anson Beard, who left Tiger last year and started Archimedes Capital Partners in New York.
Halvorsen, Laffont, Rob Ellis and Tom Brown -- Tiger "cubs" as Robertson calls his progeny -- have posted gains of as much as 38 percent this year through Sept. 14, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost more than 16 percent in that time.
Equity hedge funds dropped 3.7 percent, on average, through August, according to the CSFB/Tremont Hedge Fund index.
The best-performing alumnus is Halvorsen, who was head of equities at Tiger, and formed the US$2.5 billion Viking Global Investors LP in 1999.
His fund climbed 38 percent after fees through Sept. 14, and he was up about 1 percent this month, investors said.
His biggest holdings as of June 30 were Sprint Corp's PCS unit, up 15 percent, Ross Stores Inc, up 53 percent, and AT&T Corp, up 24 percent, according to Security and Exchange Commission filings.
Laffont, who started Coatue Capital Management LLC in 1999, has returned 24.3 percent through Sept. 19 for his US$160 million firm that invests in technology, media and telecommunications companies, investors said. His fund has climbed almost 4 percent so far this month.
Among his largest holdings at the end of June, according to SEC filings, were AT&T Corp, Oracle Corp, down 63 percent, and Peregrine Systems Inc, down 27 percent.
Rob Ellis, who formed Catequil Asset Management last year, has returned 17 percent before fees, down from 18 percent at the end of August, investors said.
Ellis, who was head of Tiger's commodities trading desk, invests US$475 million in commodities-related stocks and derivatives.
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