Bill Hwang’s Tiger Asia is solidly in the black after a stunning 8.8 percent net gain in September. This lifted the tiger Seed to an 8.6 percent positive return for the year through nine months.
Hwang’s profitable year caps a spectacular turnaround from earlier this year, when he was down nearly 30 percent. He was up 10.9 percent in August.
Remember that in September, the S&P 500 dropped 7 percent while two other key indices that the hedge fund tracks fared much worse; the Hang Seng Composite Index is down 26 percent for the year while the Shanghai Composite Index is off 16 percent.
Even so, Hwang remains below his high water mark. After losing 23 percent in 2008, he followed with 3 percent and 1 percent gains the following two years.
So, an investor who made an initial contribution to fund on January 1 will have a year-to-date net performance of about 7.3 percent.
Investors in the fund say Hwang, who is mostly a buy and hold investor, has finally cashed in on big short bets on financials in general and Chinese stocks.
Hwang started his comeback In May, the same month the global stock markets began their string of five consecutive down months.
He launched Tiger Asia in January 2001 with $16 million of Julian Robertson’s and his own money after serving as Robertson’s Korea and Asia expert for several years.
As we pointed out earlier, Hwang has been battling regulators for two years.
Hong Kong securities regulators have been trying to ban the hedge fund from trading securities or derivatives listed in Hong Kong after Tiger Asia was accused of engaging in insider trading of Bank of China and was separately accused of insider dealing and market manipulation involving China Construction Bank.
Last October Tiger Asia received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stemming from the insider trading allegations in Hong Kong.
In June, Hong Kong’s high court — the Court of First Instance — ruled it does not have the authority to determine whether Tiger Asia engaged in insider trading since it is based in New York City. It also refused to freeze nearly $5 million in Tiger Asia assets.
In July, The Court of First Instance threw out proceedings launched by Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) against Tiger Asia and three of its officers. The SFC said it is appealing the High Court’s decisions.
