A number of so-called Tiger Cubs and Seeds — hedge fund managers who either worked for Tiger Management founder Julian Robertson or received money from him directly to launch their own funds — are having pretty good years so far.
Of course, we pointed out last week the top performer in this crowd so far this year is Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global , which is up 34.5 percent through June, according to investors.
However, several other high profile ex-Tiger-ites are up in the mid-single digit range this year, roughly in line with the S&P 500, which was up about 5 percent in the first half of the year. This is not too shabby since they specialize in long-short equity, which has been a tough place to make money in recent years due to high volatility.
“This is extraordinary,” says Richard Teisch, who recently joined Liongate Capital Management as U.S. Director of Investment Research after previously serving as managing director at Cliffwater, an alternatives consulting and advisory firm, where he headed equity long/short research. Stressing he is not commenting on specific managers but on the performance of long-short managers in general, Teisch adds: “You wouldn’t expect the same absolute return as the S&P 500.”
For example, the hedge funds of Stephen Mandel Jr’s Lone Pine Capital were up around 7 percent in the first half while his long-only fund was up closer to 6 percent, according to an individual who is familiar with her performance.
Mandel, who is known to diversify his holdings across many global markets, is said to have made more money in Europe and the U.S., and to a lesser extent, Japan. On the other hand, emerging markets did not work out too well for him. In addition, his shorts did not play a positive or negative role in the first half.
Mandel founded Lone Pine in 1997 after spending seven years with Tiger Management, where he was managing director and consumer analyst. Prior to that, he was mass-market retailing analyst at Goldman Sachs from 1984 to 1990.
At year-end, he had $8.5 billion in hedged type funds.
Other Tiger Cubs fared similarly.
For example, Andreas Halvorsen, founder of Viking Capital, is up 6.6 percent so far this year. The Norwegian native and one-time platoon commander in that country’s naval SEALs (the Marinejegerkommandoen, or MJK) was a senior managing director and the director of equities at Tiger Management before founding his own firm in 1999. He had $12.2 billion under management at the end of 2010.
Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Fund is up 2.74 percent this year. He launched Maverick Capital in 1993 when he was hired by founder Sam Wyly. Ainslie, who was previously at Tiger Management, managed $11 billion in assets at year-end.
Among small funds, Miura Global Management was up 7.1 percent through at least May. One of the larger Tiger Seeds with $2.1 billion under management at year-end, the long-short equity fund was founded in 2004 by Pasco Alfaro and Richard Turnure. However, Turnure subsequently left the firm.
Jonathan Auerbach’s Hound Partners is up 13.2 percent. The global equities fund has a little less than $1 billion in assets at year-end. He was seeded by Robertson in 2004.
The much smaller Hoplite Capital Management was up 3.8 percent. It was founded in 2003 by John Lykouretzos, who previously worked for five years at Viking after spending two years as an analyst at Tiger Management.
The performance of the Tiger-related long-short funds is impressive compared to how the widely-favored multi-strategy set fared. So far this year, funds run by luminaries such as Paul Tudor Jones II, Bruce Kovner, and Louis Bacon are losing money through June.
