What marks out the few managers who made money last year is that, like Soros and his ilk before them, they took big macro bets on the state of the world. Indeed, Hedge Fund Research found that ‘macro’ managers — who take massive positions on the movement of currencies, commodities and interest rates — made an average of 5 per cent last year, whereas the average hedge fund lost more than 18 per cent.
There is no real mystery about that, and nothing strikingly novel. In a bull market, all kinds of clever, debt-fuelled strategies make money. In a bear market, only a very few, very gutsy investors survive. The money managers who can get away from the herd, who do their own research, who don’t mind taking contrary positions and, most of all, get their timing right, are the ones who do well in tumbling markets. Any successful financier over the past couple of centuries could have made the same point. But the lessons are re-learnt in each business cycle. And the people who learn them best become the voices to be listened to for the next cycle — which is why we can expect to hear a lot more of the likes of Paulson, BlueGold and Mulvaney in the years to come.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/business/3346121/the-men-who-called-the-markets-right.thtml
Posts
