How Chase Coleman Became a Hedge Fund Legend

Institutional Investor’s profile of Chase Coleman and Tiger Global, twenty years after Julian Robertson seeded him.

Why it was kept

The excerpts Kyle kept trace Tiger Global’s arc: a Tiger Cub drawing on Robertson’s core philosophies, a $10.4 billion year for investors in 2020, a private-equity business that by then was roughly half the firm, the market leaders it lamented passing on, and a closing line on machines doing more of the investing.

As Kyle captured it

• Read How Chase Coleman Became a Hedge Fund Legend about Chase Coleman and Tiger Global Management
  • Twenty years after launching a hedge fund firm with a seed investment from legendary hedge fund manager Julian Robertson, Jr., Chase Coleman is taking a well-deserved victory lap.
  • Tiger Cubs — managers who previously worked for Robertson’s Tiger Management — with legends like Stephen Mandel, Jr., John Griffin, O. Andreas Halvorsen, Philippe Laffont, and Lee Ainslie, III.
  • In 2020, Tiger Global earned its investors $10.4 billion, more than any other hedge fund on the annual list of the top 20 managers compiled by London fund-of-funds firm LCH Investments. Hedge Funds
  • Coleman drew on several of Robertson’s core philosophies, such as to buy the best companies and short the worst, “seeking to identify high-quality businesses levered to the most important secular growth trends while shorting poorly positioned companies on the wrong side of change.”
  • Today, the private equity business accounts for roughly half the firm’s assets.
  • The firm likewise lamented passing on early market-leading companies for valuation and other reasons, such as Alibaba Group Holding, as well as those it sold too early, such as Facebook ($META), Peloton ($PTON), Linkedin, Amazon ($AMZN), and Netflix.
  • “With a high degree of certainty, the future will see machine intelligence automate larger swathes of decision-making increasing efficiency and further embedding digital systems in our daily lives.”