Melvin Capital Had a Better Month

Programming note: Money Stuff will be off tomorrow, back on Monday.

My basic thesis about hedge fund managers is that the essential skill of a hedge fund manager is not picking stocks that go up, but rather continuing to manage a hedge fund. There is overlap between those skills, but they are distinct; in particular, plenty of people continue managing hedge funds even after losing lots of money, and if you want to be a “successful” (in my sense) hedge fund manager you should study their methods. (Alternatively, you can just always pick stocks that go up, which will probably make you pretty successful in my sense too, but that seems hard.) Classic methods include: