The Hedge Fund Manager With a 1000% Return

Lahde’s still very bearish on both housing (he has a new fund to short commercial real estate) and on the economy more generally (he’s predicting a deep recession). But it seems he thinks the bloodletting in residential real-estate might be over: he’s returning money to his investors, telling them “the risk/return characteristics are far less attractive than in the past”.

In a way, given the sheer number of hedge funds out there, and the increasing amounts of leverage they employ, it’s a little surprising there aren’t more funds which return 1000% in a year – and it’s actually quite reassuring that such things are still rare. To have one enormously successful year, like Lahde or Paulson, can make a man dynastically wealthy. But it doesn’t make him an investing great like Buffett or Swensen or Lynch.

Remember that during the housing bubble, people were regularly making 1000% returns on their own money by buying and flipping condos with little or no money down. In a way it’s only just that now a few hedge fund managers are making equally large returns by making bets in the opposite direction.

Source : http://seekingalpha.com/article/55343-andrew-lahde-the-hedge-fund-manager-with-a-1000-return?source=feed