Paul Tudor Jones Biography

Paul Tudor Jones II (born September 28, 1954), is the founder of Tudor Investment Corporation, the management company for his various private investment partnerships, also referred to as hedge funds. As of March 2013, he was estimated to have a net worth of USD 3.6 billion by Forbes Magazine and ranked as the 108th richest American and 376th richest in the world. In March 2012, Jones ranked No. 330 on the list of the world's wealthiest people.

Business life

Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He graduated from Presbyterian Day School, an all-boys elementary school, before attending Memphis University School for high school. Jones then went on to University of Virginia, earning an undergraduate degree in economics in 1976 as well as a welterweight boxing championship.

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."

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."

In 1980, Jones founded Tudor Investment Corporation, which is today a leading asset management firm headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut. The Tudor Group, consisting 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.

Mr. Jones previously served as a director of the Futures Industry Association and was instrumental in the creation and development of an education-arm for the association"?the then Futures Industry Institute, a research institute later renamed the Institute for Financial Markets based in Washington D.C. Mr. Jones was also an advocate for the design and implementation of the first ethics training course that became the standard for exchange membership on all futures exchanges in the United States.

In February 2013, Forbes Magazine listed him as one of the 40 Highest-Earning hedge fund managers. Although the hedge fund industry standard is two percent per annum of assets under management and twenty percent of the profits, Tudor Investment Corp. charges four percent per annum of assets under management and twenty-three percent of the profits.

In the 1987, PBS film "TRADER: The Documentary".

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 hour long 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. The video has surfaced from time to time on different video sharing and torrent sites but has often been taken down shortly thereafter due to copyright claims.

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.

Trading style and beliefs

As reported in Market Wizards and the press, Jones futures trading style and beliefs are summarized as follows:

• Contrarian attempt to buy and sell turning points. Keeps trying the single trade idea until he changes his mind, fundamentally. Otherwise, he keeps cutting his position size down. Then he trades the smallest amount when his trading is at its worst.
• Considers himself as a premier market opportunist. When he develops an idea, he pursues it from a very-low-risk standpoint until he has been proven wrong repeatedly, or until he changes his viewpoint.
• Swing trader, the best money is made at the market turns. Has missed a lot of meat in the middle, but catches a lot of tops and bottoms.
• Spends his day making himself happy and relaxed. Gets out if a losing position is making him uncomfortable. Nothing's better than a fresh start. Key is to play great defense, not great offense.
• Never average losers. Decreases his trading size when he is doing poorly, increase when he is trading well.
• He has mental stops. If it hits that number, he is out no matter what. He uses not only price stops, but time stops.
• Monitors the whole portfolio equity (risk) in realtime.
• He believes prices move first and fundamentals come second.
• He doesn't care about mistakes made 3 seconds ago, but what he is going to do from the next moment on.
• Don't be a hero. Don't have an ego. Always question yourself and your ability. Don't ever feel that you are very good. The second you do, you are dead.

Philanthropy

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 African Great Lakes country's Parliament for not permitting hunting in his reserve. The flagship hotel there, Sasaskwa, was named the #1 hotel in the world by Travel & Leisure Magazine in 2011 and 2012. 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 has set up a trust for Pamushana a private reserve, operated by South Africa's Singita group, the reserve is about 300 Miles southeast of Harare, near the Mozambique border in Zimbabwe.

Jones has 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. In April 2012, UVA announced the creation of a new Contemplative Sciences Center through a $12 million gift from Jones and his wife, Sonia.

In June 2012, he was reportedly a key figure in the controversial ousting of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan. He penned an editorial supporting her resignation. On June 26, 2012, The University of Virginia Board of Visitors unanimously voted to reinstate Sullivan.

In April 2013, Jones was involved in another controversy at the University of Virginia after telling an audience of students and alumni, "As soon as that baby's lips touch that girl's bosom, forget it. Every single investment I did, every desire to understand what's going to make this go up or down is going to be overwhelmed by the most beautiful experience which a man will never share, an emotive connection between that mother and that baby. I've just seen it happen over and over again."

Paul Tudor Jones is a former chairman of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and currently chairs the Everglades Foundation.

Personal life

Jones has been married to his wife, Sonia Klein, an Australian-born, New York-based yoga entrepreneur, since 1988. They have four children; Caroline, Dorothy "Dottie," Chrissy and Jack.

In 1990, Jones pleaded guilty to illegally filling protected wetlands on his estate, and paid a $2 million settlement.

Jones has donated money to numerous Republican candidates. In 2012 he donated $200,000 to Mitt Romney. In 2008 Jones donated to John McCain and Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaigns.