Good morning, everyone!
After four years of writing The Profile, I've studied how the most successful and interesting people in the world reason their way through problems, rise up in times of hardship, and perform under extreme pressure.
Many of those people exist in the world of finance, and we often like to point to the big-name investors. What about the more obscure figures — the ones who keep a low-profile but whose track records speak for themselves?
I've highlighted many of them in my weekly newsletter, and I've learned valuable lessons by studying their approach to life and business.
Below are five of the greatest investors whose stories you may have never heard.
1. Arne Alsin, the Man Who Abandoned Value
When Arne Alsin, the founder of investment firm Worm Capital, wrote about investing in disruptive companies two years ago, one commentator called it “one of the dumbest articles ever written.” After a 274% year, Alsin isn’t the one who looks dumb.
How?
He gave up on every investing principle he had once held. Alsin says: “I just totally gave up and said, ‘I’m going to do the exact opposite.’”
A forensic accountant by training who had formerly worked for Peat Marwick, Alsin switched from being a classic Warren Buffett–style value investor who scoured balance sheets to being one who obsessively embraced the disruptive promises of Silicon Valley and the new economy.
2. Mark Spitznagel, the Investor Who Capitalizes on Catastrophe
Hedge fund investor Mark Spitznagel likes to wait for the perfect moment, the perfect crisis. And he's very patient.
His $4.3 billion (assets) firm Universa Investments always loses small sums until one day a black swan appears. That swan appeared in 2020 in the form of a global pandemic, and the tables turned for Spitznagel.
The firm's flagship “Black Swan Protection Protocol” fund earned its near two dozen institutional investors a staggering 3,612% last March, putting its 2020 gains at 4,144%. (Read more here.)
3. Cathie Wood, the CIO With the Hottest Hand
Cathie Wood is already in the pantheon of top money handlers over any period in the past five years, and has been the most persuasive — and so far prescient — champion of Tesla. Her actively managed Ark Innovation ETF is the best performer among 584 funds with at least $1 billion of assets in the global equity market.
Her focus on innovation, “centered around genome sequencing, robotics, artificial intelligence, energy storage and blockchain technology,” enabled Ark Innovation ETF to increase 127 times, to $2.4 billion from its $15 million grubstake in 2017. In the process, the Ark ETF rewarded its shareholders with more than three times the return of the S&P 500 Index and more than twice the Nasdaq’s bounty.
4. Orlando Bravo, Wall Street's Best Dealmaker
Few outside of finance have heard of the 49-year-old Orlando Bravo, but he is the driving force behind Wall Street’s hottest firm, which has $39 billion in assets: Thoma Bravo.
Bravo has sold or listed 25 investments worth a total of $20 billion, four times their cost. His secret? He invests only in well-established software companies, especially those with clearly discernible moats.
Bravo’s firm has done 230 software deals worth over $68 billion since 2003 and presently oversees a portfolio of 38 software companies that generate some $12 billion in annual revenue and employ 40,000 people.
The opportunities today are the biggest I’ve ever seen,” he says. “Right now we are in a huge, exploding and changing industry.”
5. Dawn Fitzpatrick, the Powerhouse Running a $26B Fund
When Dawn Fitzpatrick started her career as a 22-year-old at the American Stock Exchange, traders made bets on how long she would last.
She lasted.
Fitzpatrick became one of Wall Street’s most powerful women, and now, she is the chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management.
She manages $26 billion of billionaire George Soros’s personal and family wealth.
“As an investor,” she says, “you have to continuously evolve and learn.”
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