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Julian Robertson took a deceptively simple approach to investing: own the best companies and bet against the worst ones. To succeed in the investment world means being right on more occasions than you are wrong. And for most of Robertson’s time running Tiger Management — the hedge fund firm he founded in 1980 — he was right.
朱利安•羅伯遜(Julian Robertson)採取了一種看似簡單的投資方法:持有最好的公司,並做空最差的公司。要在投資界取得成功,就意味著你在更多的情況下是對的,而不是錯的。在羅伯遜經營老虎管理公司(他於1980年創立的對沖基金公司)的大部分時間裏,他都是對的。
Robertson, who has died aged 90, was an investment industry giant who spawned a dynasty of hedge fund managers known as the “Tiger cubs”.
羅伯遜已經去世,享年90歲,他是投資界的巨擘,孕育了一個被稱爲「小虎隊」(Tiger cubs)的對沖基金經理王朝。
Born in North Carolina in 1932, Robertson served as an officer in the US Navy after university. In 1957, he joined Kidder, Peabody & Co, an American securities firm, as a sales trainee, where he befriended the son-in-law of Alfred Winslow Jones, the intellectual father of the hedge fund industry. This would lay the foundations for Tiger’s investment approach.
羅伯遜1932年出生於北卡羅來納州,大學畢業後在美國海軍擔任軍官。1957年,他加入了美國證券公司基德爾與皮博迪公司(Kidder, Peabody & Co.),擔任銷售培訓生。在那裏,他與對沖基金之父阿爾弗雷德·溫斯洛·瓊斯(Alfred Winslow Jones)的女婿成爲了朋友。這將爲老虎的投資方式奠定基礎。
In 1978, Robertson moved to New Zealand intending to write a novel but soon returned to New York. Aged 48, he co-founded Tiger, named after his tendency to call people “Tiger” when he could not remember their name. Launched with initial capital of $8mn, it grew to over $21bn at its peak. Over its two decades, the fund delivered average annual returns of more than 25 per cent, and beat the S&P 500 in 14 of the years.
1978年,羅伯遜搬到紐西蘭,打算寫一部小說,但很快又回到了紐約。48歲時,他與人合夥創立了老虎,這個名字源於他在記不住別人名字的時候喜歡叫別人「Tiger」。該公司最初的資本爲800萬美元,在巔峯時期成長到210多億美元。在20年的時間裏,該基金的平均年回報率超過25%,有14年的回報率超過了標準普爾500指數。
Tall, slender and gregarious, Robertson dressed in Savile Row suits, spoke with a Carolina drawl and wore his sharp intellect casually. “He was a charmer in a southern way, a networker in a New York way,” writes Sebastian Mallaby in his book More Money Than God. “He was a guy’s guy, a jock’s jock, and he hired in his own image.”
羅伯遜身材修長,愛交際,穿著倫敦薩維爾街的定製西裝,說話帶著卡羅來納慢吞吞的拖腔,漫不經心地流露著他敏銳的智慧。塞巴斯蒂安·馬拉比(Sebastian Mallaby)在他的書《比上帝更有錢》(More Money Than God)中寫道:「他有南方人的魅力,紐約人的人脈。他是男人中的男人,運動員中的運動員,他按照自己的形象招募員工。」
The typical Tiger analyst was competitive, curious, extroverted — and male. Being on Robertson’s team “was like the Navy Seals,” recalls Tiger cub Philippe Laffont, who went on to found Coatue Management. Every morning at 6am sharp, Robertson rang the trading desk to check in on performance. Analysts were interrogated on investments with their boss pouncing on a rogue decimal place or a wrong number. Robertson would challenge traders to an exercise bike race in the gym and fly them to outward bound retreats in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains in his private plane. The women Tiger employed in support roles “looked like supermodels” recalls one visitor.
典型的老虎分析員是好勝、好奇,並且外向的--而且是男性。後來成立了Coatue管理公司的「小虎隊」成員菲利普·拉豐(Philippe Laffont)回憶說,在羅伯遜的團隊中,「就像在海豹突擊隊一樣」。每天早上6點整,羅伯遜都會給交易臺打電話,檢查業績。分析師們被審問投資情況,他們的老闆會對一個錯誤的小數點位或一個錯誤的數字大加抨擊。羅伯遜會邀請交易員在健身房參加一場自行車運動比賽,然後用他的私人飛機帶他們去愛達荷州鋸齒山(Idaho 's Sawtooth Mountains)的戶外活動。一位來訪者回憶道,老虎僱傭的女性助理人員「看起來像超模」。
Robertson enjoyed learning from young people. He was unfamiliar with the market for credit default swaps until one of his analysts told him about it a few years before the financial crisis. He decided to trade CDS and made triple digit returns in 2007-2008.
羅伯遜喜歡向年輕人學習。他對信用違約掉期市場並不熟悉,直到金融危機發生前幾年,他的一位分析師告訴他。他決定交易CDS,並在2007-2008年獲得三位數的回報。
Tiger’s simple investment approach belied a forensic analysis of companies and their management. Robertson could be short-tempered but his force of personality helped build a diverse group of investors including singer Paul Simon, writer Tom Wolfe and Blackstone founder Steve Schwarzman. In 1998 he even persuaded former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher to join the advisory board.
老虎簡單的投資方法掩蓋了他對公司及其管理層的法醫般的詳細分析。羅伯遜可能脾氣暴躁,但他的個性力量幫助建立了一個多元化的投資者羣體,包括歌手保羅•西蒙(Paul Simon)、作家湯姆•沃爾夫(Tom Wolfe)和黑石(Blackstone)創辦人蘇世民(Steve Schwarzman)。1998年,他甚至說服英國前首相瑪格麗特•撒切爾(Margaret Thatcher)加入該顧問委員會。
Short seller Jim Chanos recalls running a short portfolio for Tiger in the nineties and being regularly summoned to the firm’s 101 Park Avenue headquarters to defend his ideas. After the first lunch, Robertson walked Chanos to the lift. “Jim, that was great and thank you for coming over,” he said. “Also, please cover that short” — ie close out the investment.
做空者吉姆•查諾斯(Jim Chanos)回憶起上世紀90年代爲老虎管理一個做空投資組合時的情景,當時他經常被公司召集到位於101公園大道的總部,爲自己的想法辯護。喫完第一頓午飯後,羅伯遜送查諾斯去了電梯。「吉姆,太棒了,謝謝你過來,」他說:「另外,請補上那筆空頭」 - 即關閉投資。
Tiger’s legacy is as much the success of Robertson’s protégées — among them Laffont, Chase Coleman, John Griffin, Lee Ainslie, Steve Mandel and Andreas Halvorsen — as it is his own track record. Almost 200 hedge fund firms can trace their origins back to Tiger Management, including Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management, which blew up spectacularly in 2021.
老虎的遺產是羅伯遜的門徒們的成功——其中包括拉豐、蔡斯·科爾曼、約翰·格里芬、李·安斯利、史蒂夫•曼德爾和安德烈亞斯•哈爾沃森——就像他自己的記錄一樣。有近200家對沖基金公司的起源可以追溯到老虎管理,其中包括比爾·黃(Bill Hwang)的Archegos Capital Management,該公司在2021年爆倉。
Robertson, who is survived by three sons and nine grandchildren, gave over $2bn to charity, and was among the early signatories to the Giving Pledge. “When Julian got a philanthropic recommendation from someone he trusted, he immediately wrote a cheque that always involved a lot of zeros,” Warren Buffett, who co-created the Giving Pledge, told the FT. “He never wanted a word of recognition or thanks.”
羅伯遜有三個兒子和九個孫子在世,他向慈善機構捐贈了超過20億美元,是「捐贈誓言」(Giving Pledge)的早期簽署人之一。「捐贈誓言」的共同創辦人沃倫•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)向英國《金融時報》表示:「當朱利安從他信任的人那裏得到一份慈善推薦時,他立即寫了一張支票,上面總是寫著很多『零』。他從來不想要一句認可或感謝的話。」
As Tiger grew, it expanded beyond its core expertise in US equities into government bonds, commodities and currencies. Some of the drivers of Robertson’s success — hefty bets with unshakeable conviction — were eventually his undoing. A huge wager against the Japanese yen and a large position in airline USAir proved painful, while his refusal to embrace the dotcom boom — which he said was “unwittingly creating a Ponzi pyramid destined for collapse” — cost the fund a fifth of its value in 1999.
隨著老虎的發展,該公司的業務範圍從其在美國股市的核心專長擴展到了政府債券、大宗商品和外匯領域。羅伯遜成功的一些驅動因素——堅定信念下的鉅額賭注——最終導致了他的失敗。事實證明,做空日元的鉅額賭注和持有美國航空公司(USAir)大量頭寸是痛苦的,而他拒絕擁抱網路熱潮——他表示,網路熱潮「在不知不覺中創造了一個註定會崩潰的龐氏金字塔」——讓該基金在1999年損失了五分之一的價值。
Robertson was ultimately right about the dotcom bubble. But it was too late for Tiger. After losses and a slump in assets, the hedge fund finally returned outside investor money in 2000. Its charismatic founder was living proof that in the stock markets, being early is the same as being wrong. Harriet Agnew, Laurence Fletcher, Ortenca Aliaj and Eric Platt
羅伯遜關於網路泡沫的預測最終是正確的。但對老虎來說已經太晚了。在經歷了虧損和資產滑坡之後,該對沖基金終於在2000年歸還了外部投資者的資金。其富有魅力的創辦人活生生地證明,在股票市場上,早到就等於錯了。