Julian Robertson was beloved by most of the people who knew him—and not only because he made them all very, very rich.
Robertson founded Tiger Management, the first modern hedge fund, in 1980, being one of the second generation of hedge funds and by far the most important fund of its generation. Tiger Management an annualized return of over 25% from that year to 2000, the year when he shut down the fund and effectively retired. But that retirement was not genuine; after shutting down shop, Robertson continued to fund smaller hedge funds—the so-called “Tiger cubs”—and discuss investing with a wide variety of people, including young people interested in finance who were often shocked to find Robertson was approachable, friendly, affable, and kind. Many who knew Robertson personally said the same thing about the man; in an industry stereotyped as a macho, aggressive, ruthless, and even immoral one, Robertson exhibited the opposite of all of those characteristics.
Tiger Management started with $8 million in funds, and ended its term with $21 billion in assets under management, making it one of the largest hedge funds at the time (and, to this day, $21 billion is still a respectable amount of AUM for a hedge fund). Some of that money, and much of Robertson’s own wealth, went into funding the Tiger cubs, a new generation of hedge funds largely established by Robertson’s former employees—men like Chase Coleman, who founded Tiger Global Management, would grow their seed money to funds much larger than Tiger Management (before the 2022 market, which has been brutal for Tiger Global, the company had almost $100 billion in AUM).
Not all of Tiger’s progeny have been successes—but most of the 200 funds that were born as Tiger cubs or funded by Tiger cubs (so-called “grandcubs”) have been. Some exceptions have become notorious, like Bill Hwang, who was arrested on fraud charges earlier this year after making extremely overleveraged and seemingly illogical bets on certain stocks. Hwang, like many of the principals of the Tiger cubs, was camera shy during his tenure. Many of the cubs—Blue Ridge Capital, Coatue, D1 Capital, have done their best to not be household names.
Robertson fostered such a culture at Tiger Management, arguing that a focus on market opportunities required more listening than talking. His investment style was not unusual—like Warren Buffett, Robertson liked to focus on a portfolio of no more than 20 long positions. Unlike Buffett, Robertson went far afield and incorporated short positions (also limited to 20) to create the uncorrelated returns that hedge funds were designed to produce.
Many of his bets were exotic—and those exotic investments often produced the largest returns. For instance, his shorting of the Thai baht in 1997 produced such massive returns for Robertson and his firm that it shocked even him—but the bet, although painful for Thailand at the time, was a brutal and needed wakeup call. It showed them that there were limits to how much corruption and political intervention in monetary policy was possible in a modern developing economy. Robertson also remained friendly with the king of Thailand long after that disaster and until the latter’s death in 2016.
Robertson’s focus on listening, on looking at stories, and on approaching markets with humility are often pointed to as causes for his success. And that approach also made him an incredibly beloved ex-boss, client, and friend to hundreds of people across finance, who will surely miss him.
