| Paul Tudor Jones II | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 28, 1954 Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | University of Virginia |
| Occupation | Hedge fund manager |
| Home town | Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Net worth | US$3.3 billion (2011)[1] |
| Spouse | Sonia Jones (married 1988); 4 children |
Paul Tudor Jones II (born September 28, 1954), is the founder of Tudor Investment Corporation, which is the management company for his various private investment partnerships, also referred to as hedge funds. As of March 2011, he was estimated to have a net worth of USD 3.3 billion by Forbes Magazine and ranked as 336th richest in the world.[1] His management company charges the hedge funds he manages a fee that is higher than the industry standards. The industry standards are two percent per annum of assets under management and twenty percent of the profits, whereas Tudor Investment Corp. charges four percent per annum of assets under management and twenty-three percent of the profits.[2]
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Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He attended Presbyterian Day School there before attending Memphis University School for high school and then University of Virginia, earning an undergraduate degree in economics in 1976 as well as a welterweight boxing championship.[3]
In 1976, he started working on the trading floors as a clerk and then became a broker for E.F. Hutton. In 1980, he went strictly on his own for two and a half profitable years, before he "really got bored." He then applied to Harvard Business School, was accepted, and packed to go when the idea occurred to him that: "this is crazy, because for what I'm doing here, they're not going to teach me anything. This skill set is not something that they teach in business school." [4]
Jones' cousin William Dunavant Jr., whose Dunavant Enterprises is one of the world's largest cotton merchants, advised Jones to go down to New Orleans to talk with commodity broker Eli Tullis, who hired and then mentored him in trading cotton futures at the New York Cotton Exchange. Jones later said:
"He [Eli Tullis] was the toughest son of a bitch I ever knew. He taught me that trading is very competitive and you have to be able to handle getting your butt kicked. No matter how you cut it, there are enormous emotional ups and downs involved."[5]
In 1980 Jones founded Tudor Investment Corporation, which is today a leading asset management firm headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut. The Tudor Group, which consists of Tudor Investment Corporation and its affiliates, is involved in active trading, investing and research in the global equity, venture capital, debt, currency, and commodity markets.
One of Jones' earliest and major successes was predicting Black Monday in 1987, tripling his money during the event due to large short positions.[6] In the 1987, PBS film "TRADER: The Documentary".[7]
The film shows Jones as a young man predicting the 1987 crash, using methods similar to market forecaster Robert Prechter. Although the video was shown on public television in November 1987, very few copies exist. Those that do are hoarded by traders who watch the hourlong movie in the hope of gleaning possible trading tips from Jones. On the Internet, bids for the video start at $295. According to Michael Glyn, the video's director, Jones requested in the 1990s that the documentary be removed from circulation.[8] The video surfaced briefly on YouTube at the end of July 2009, before being taken down due to alleged copyright violations ([2]).
Jones' firm currently manages $17.7 billion (as of June 1, 2007). Their investment capabilities are broad and diverse, including global macro trading, fundamental equity investing in the U.S. and Europe, emerging markets, venture capital, commodities, event-driven strategies, and technical trading systems. Jones, with his colleague Hunt Taylor, was instrumental in the creation of FINEX, the financial futures division of the New York Board of Trade, and in the development of the U.S. dollar index futures contract that trades there. He also served as Chairman of the New York Cotton Exchange from August 1992 through June 1995.
As reported in Market Wizards, Jones futures trading style and beliefs are summarized as follows [9]:
Jones is the founder of the Robin Hood Foundation, a philanthropic organization mainly backed by hedge fund operators. He founded and was the Chairman of the Board of the Excellence Charter School, the country's first all-boys charter school, located in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He founded and chaired the Bedford Stuyvesant I Have A Dream Foundation, which puts local students in colleges.
He owns Grumeti Reserves in Tanzania’s Western Serengeti and was recently lauded by the East African country’s Parliament for not permitting hunting in his reserve. Jones has been working with Tanzania and Paul Milton of Hart Howerton, a London architectural firm that specializes in large-scale land use, to develop regional plans for the sustainability of the area, its wildlife and its local communities.
He had made large donations to his alma mater, the University of Virginia, including a $35 million donation, which went to the construction of a new basketball arena, named the John Paul Jones Arena, in honor of his father, an attorney who also attended the University of Virginia.[10]
Paul Tudor Jones is a former chairman of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and currently chairs the Everglades Foundation.
Jones has been married to his wife Sonia, an Australian former fashion model, since 1988. They have four children.[11][12]
In 1990, Jones pleaded guilty to illegally filling protected wetlands on his estate, and paid a $2 million settlement.[13]