Wednesday, December 19, 2012

An Update on Vinik Asset Management

In July we had a mini heads-up on what Mr. Vinik was up to:

Billionaire Vinik Buying into Bakken Play Continental Resources (CLR)
Mr. Vinik (Tampa Bay Lightning, Liverpool Football Club) is probably best known for barely beating the S&P when he was at Fidelity Magellan (83.70% to 77.79%/4 years).
He left and started showing off. Tampa Bay Times: 

Who is Jeff Vinik?
Best known for managing the Fidelity Magellan mutual fund in the early 1990s. … After an ill-timed move out of stocks, he left Magellan in 1996, starting a highly successful hedge fund with Vinik Asset Management. He made investors a reported 93.8 percent return in his first 11 months (and about 50 percent a year for each of the three years after that). … At the end of 2000, he returned investors about $4.2 billion and concentrated on his own portfolio. ...
Here's more from Hedge Fund Letters:
We just wrote a Profile on Vinik Asset Management. Back in 2002, the founder and portfolio manager Jeff Vinik returned money to outside investors (a whopping 4.2 billion dollars — figure the 2-20 on that…). Today, the hedge fund manages about 6 billion dollars exclusively for family and friends.

(In case you were wondering what Mr. Vinik does with all the free time he gains from not managing outside money: He advises and buys sports teams.  He is the owner of NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning, as well as the Tampa Bay Storm from the Arena Football League. He is also a minority owner of the Boston Red Sox, and serves on the board of directors for the Liverpool Football Club of the English Premier League.)...MORE