Paulson Having Another Tough Year

[Guest]

just sent you a pm.

[FrankArabia]

replied. nothing but respect from me.

 

 

[ERICOPOLY]

Loopy says he likes it up on top

Yes he knows if he ever lets go

The pretty machine will swallow him whole

 

[Kraven]

Ben,

 

I agree that I was too harsh by saying "middling." Like Kraven said, he had solid, but not spectacular results. However, I will say that since inception, the results have been middling ie you would've been better off sticking it into a total market index/s&p 500 index after taxes and fees (or close to it). For a guy to take $5 billion or so for himself and leave investors with index returns since inception...well, to me, that just ain't right.

 

I am not sure why things get jumbled up.  Paulson was a good money manager until the time of the "big short".  He had good results.  Steady and solid.  He then reached spectacular levels of performance as a result of the big short.  AUM ballooned.  So at that point, call it, 2008-2009, he has now had 2 distinct parts of his money management career.  The first is with relatively manageable size in merger arb.  The second was the shorting of the housing market.  He now has too much AUM to continue in merger arb so he needs to look for something else.  All he can come up with is macro calls.  Because he made billions he is accorded guru status.  Yet one call does not a guru make.  The facts are clear, he has not been able to sustain either the solid or the spectacular.  I am not sure why this is so difficult to understand.  He is not being criticized, he is just simply has not been able to maintain the level of performance that he previously enjoyed. 

[Parsad]

November no better for Paulson.  Cheers!

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/paulsons-hedge-funds-suffer-another-163101441.html;_ylt=Ao0qdI_SXHFpARfqxM7fKTSiuYdG;_ylu=X3oDMTQ4MDgzNGdrBG1pdANDTkJDIFRvcCBTdG9yaWVzBHBrZwNjMWNlNDliMS02ZGU1LTMwNmYtOWVlNi03MmExMjgwYWRmYmYEcG9zAzQEc2VjA01lZGlhQkxpc3RNaXhlZExQQ0FUZW1wBHZlcgNiNGVjZTdjNi00MDhjLTExZTItOGRmNy1hOTMyYzVmYjFiZTM-;_ylg=X3oDMTFpNzk0NjhtBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3

[bobp]

I think that in the long run pessimism under-performs optimism.