How Tiger Global got its claws out when the tech bubble burst

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In the year In 2021, as financial markets grow, Tiger Global, one of the most successful hedge funds on the planet, due to the epidemic in technology stocks, the company invited American downhill skier Lindsay Vonn to advise about 30 investors.

Tiger Analysts They asked Vonn how she recovered from her shocking crash at the Super-G world championships in 2013, endured a year of rehab, and became world champion again in her second race.

Now the New York-based hedge fund, which manages more than $90 billion in assets, is learning the lesson of its recovery, people familiar with the matter say, after the original fund shed about half its value through July, losing billions of dollars to investors.

The company’s press-shy billionaire founder, Chase Coleman, has built one of the world’s largest and most closely watched portfolios by leveraging Tiger’s legendary appetite for risk, with soaring interest rates and falling tech stocks.

One person familiar with Tiger described the new approach more prosaically as “a focus on not losing money.”

Tiger’s investment groups in the US and Asia have been gathering momentum since February, including video conferencing startup Zoom, e-signature specialist DocuSign, online used car company Carvana, food delivery app DoorDash, video game company Roblox, and crypto broker Robinhood, which emerged this week. According to regulatory documents.

Other big positions cut include crypto-firm Coinbase, internet retailer Warby Parker, music group Spotify and connected fitness bet Peloton Interactive, according to the filings.

As he beats the bushes — and fears he won’t miss the kind of rally in tech stocks that the fund decided to leave — Tiger is focusing his portfolio in companies he believes won’t be the only winners of the pandemic, and looking closely at whether tech earnings will follow. Reviews and declines begin.

“When companies adjust their forecasts, we focus on whether the company’s earnings follow the values, and it is necessary to make improvements to our models,” Tiger said in an August letter to investors obtained by the Financial Times.

Tiger Global's top five holdings

The company has shied away from high-tech groups, keeping its focus on stable companies such as software groups Microsoft, Atlassian and Cevicino, as well as cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, Brazil’s fintech Nubank, and China’s eCommerce. Group JD.com and Sea, Singapore’s technology conglomerate, according to people familiar with the situation and the record.

Before recently expanding into the Nasdaq, he built large positions in tech giants Meta, Alphabet and cybersecurity firm Sentinel ON, the people said.

Significant new positions have come in China, where tech stocks have been stagnant for years but have outperformed in 2022.

More broadly, Tiger dramatically cut its overall exposure to stocks — backing bets that prices would rise and boosting the popularity of its short book, which companies would undervalue and bets controlled by Coleman, the same people said.

“We have been working diligently on ideas for our short portfolio, which has been profitable this year but more closely tracks market indices than we miss,” Tiger told investors in an August letter.

Tiger’s hedge fund has moved to the side of investments in privately held startups. The fund, which invests some of its portfolio in private companies, has not made a new private investment in more than a year, the people said.

In its private equity portfolio, Tiger considers the downside risk of a list of companies it believes are close to going public, such as fintech Chime and e-commerce company Checkout.com, the fund told investors. Those who know the matter.

In its quarterly letter to investors earlier this month, Tiger alerted investors to the changes in its portfolio.

“We welcome the opportunity to use recent learnings to improve our investment process,” the fund said.

As part of its restructuring efforts, the firm is investing heavily in data science to better track its position, and changes have been made to its investment team.

Edward Lei, a partner with Tiger who oversaw investments outside China for nearly a decade, has left the firm, according to documents seen by the Financial Times. Tiger recently hired Dai Wang, a longtime portfolio manager at T Rowe Price, to lead its public equity investments in the country.

Investor Sam Harland, who once helped Tiger oversee a $1 billion-plus position in Carvana, also left. Tiger recently hired Ben Tso, a former analyst at Palestra Capital Management, to focus on consumer-related investments.

Later in August, Evan Stanley, a partner at hedge fund Kadian Capital, will join Tiger. Then in September, the firm will bring on four more analysts, making the investment team even bigger than before, people familiar with the matter said.

Trained by Julian Robertson at Tiger Management, Coleman started Tiger Global in 2001 during the bursting of the dotcom bubble and invested billions in the company’s funds, much of it invested in long-term private equity funds. Locks.

But despite the recent probe, Tiger has no intention of turning the hedge fund into a family office, two sources said, a move some struggling funds have made near their nadir.

Since its inception, the flagship fund’s annual net income has fallen from 20 percent last September to less than 15 percent as of June 30, the filings show. The currency started to recover in June and July.

This summer, under different circumstances, Tiger hosted another sports celebrity, 23-time gold medalist swimmer Michael Phelps, who offered inspiration as the financial markets melted. He explained how to use failure as motivation.

“One of the messages we’ve consistently heard from Michael and other top performers is that the path to long-term success is rarely straightforward,” Tiger told investors.

“Failures and losses are part of the deal,” he said. “There is no incentive for our investors to win again, and we are confident that we will.”

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