对于对冲基金经理John Burbank III，2007年8月市场动荡是一个轻微的昙花一现。他的护照全球基金下降了2.4％，而MSCI世界指数下跌3％，并由高盛，萨克斯＆Co.，Renaissance Technologies Corp.，D.E.Shaw＆Co.和其他大型定量管理人员跌跌撞地。伯班克长期没有留下来。Passport Global，为23亿美元的长短期基金，2007年回报率为218.9％，而标准普尔500指数的5.49％。
当评级机构在7月开始降级抵押贷款贷款人时，Burbank没有等待跳跃。他是一个选择的少数投资者之一 - 包括威尔堡罗斯，约翰保尔森，J.Kyle Bass和James Melcher - 通过预期住宅抵押贷款市场爆炸而利得利润。Burbank started shorting the mortgage pools of such subprime lenders as Long Beach Mortgage Co. and New Century Financial Corp. back in October 2005. His Global Fund wasn’t in quite the same league as the Paulson Credit Opportunities Fund, which returned 589.9 percent in 2007, or Bass’s Subprime Credit Strategies Fund, which rose 423.8 percent. But by putting some $70 million between October 1, 2005, and December 31, 2007, into credit default swaps for mortgage pools consisting of loans to borrowers who had low credit scores and lived in states with high default rates, Burbank has generated $1.1 billion for investors so far — about two thirds of Global Fund’s total returns. The rest came mainly from long equity positions in mining and Indian stocks.
“The way to make high returns is to invest in things people don’t understand,” says the 43-year-old Burbank, founder and CIO of Passport Capital, of which Global Fund is the flagship. The big question now is whether Burbank, who shares the third floor of a modest building in San Francisco’s Financial District with 25 analysts and 15 support staff, can maintain his streak. A small but loyal circle of clients is banking on a repeat performance as Burbank zeroes in on a few global sectors that he believes are as misunderstood by investors as the mortgage business was two years ago: mining, renewable energy and alternative asset management. The firm also employs two geologists in Vancouver and an analyst in Hong Kong.
“护照能够比大多数人更早地识别投资主题，这就是为什么他们成功的原因，”纽约资金资金提供的Adair首都Paolo Alimonti说，该资金投资约30个对冲基金，包括全球。
最古老的四个护照资金，伯班克从2000年8月开始，来自朋友的80万美元，全球基金通过12月31日返回2000年12月31日的年度41.5％，净额，容易击败其目标为30％。随着其恒星2007，该基金在过去三年中注册了64.7％的年度净净值，49.1％多。相比之下，履行全球宏观长期资金的HFRI股权对抗指数，分别为全球基金的一生中分别为10.7％，11.0％和12.2％的10.7％，11.0％和12.2％。包括护照资料基金，护照序幕基金和护照印度基金，所有这些都在2004年至2006年之间开始投资与全球基金重叠的主题，该公司截至12月31日的资产管理36亿美元 - 高于823万美元同年前。
Global Fund, which Burbank runs with portfolio managers Jim Cunningham and Walther Lovato, was 92 percent long and 25 percent short as of December 31. (The percentages don’t total 100 because the fund uses leverage.) The team employs a mix of strategies to express its belief in the long-term potential of commodities and emerging-markets economies , and to make tactical bets in the U.S. The fund is long on energy and power-equipment companies because of continued strong demand, Burbank says, and it’s long on commodities, which provide “the only viable hedge against inflation and a weak U.S. dollar.” Other key holdings include Indian stocks, which Burbank believes will benefit from the country’s secular growth trend; and Asian consumer companies, which he sees as superior to U.S. businesses in that sector. The fund takes a dim view of subprime mortgages and biotechnology and information technology stocks, which Burbank regards as “overowned and overrated.”
杜克大学的英国文学研究生,Burbank entered the investment world in 1992 after earning an MBA from Stanford University. For four years he dabbled as an investor in San Francisco Bay Area start-ups such as fruit juice maker Odwalla, which he co-founded in 1993. (Coca-Cola Co. bought the company for $181 million in 2001.) In January 1996, Burbank became director of research at ValueVest Management Co., which managed an emerging-markets long-short fund and was run by value investor Mark Bakar from a small office on the San Francisco trading floor of its prime brokerage, Bear, Stearns & Co. Burbank urged Bakar to sell his Southeast Asian holdings on the grounds that they were not properly hedged, but Bakar demurred, and ValueVest’s portfolio lost 20 percent of its value in 1998, declining to $150 million, as a result of the Asian financial crisis.
Roger Richter, who ran JMG Triton Offshore Fund, a $1 billion market-neutral arbitrage fund, from an office down the hall at Bear Stearns, hired Burbank as a consultant in March 1999. Burbank had already picked several emerging-markets investments for Richter that had soared in value, such as Mumbai-listed oil, petrochemicals and infrastructure conglomerate Reliance Industries, which appreciated 157 percent in the year ended October 1999 — and has grown 34-fold since then. “He had an incredible ability to find these things and get in early,” says Richter.
2000年，正如技术泡沫破裂的那样，伯班克决定成为他自己的老板。Richter帮助他在一个办公室设有彭博终端，并向他推荐给一个湾区Dot-Com企业家，他们于2001年，给了Burbank他500,000美元的IRA管理。
“The whole world was long the U.S.,” recalls Burbank. “I wanted to short the U.S. I started looking for underinvested areas that were less correlated.” Lacking a track record, he solicited clients by charging 1.5 percent of assets and 20 percent of returns, undercutting the usual 2-and-20 hedge fund formula, and requiring investors to lock up their money for only six months instead of the standard one to three years.
全球基金在2001年3月仍然在2001年3月缩短的技术股票时被击败了。它在其第一个全日历年份返回了7％，尽管它仍然击败了标准普尔500指数，下降了11.89％。该基金于2002年上涨了22.1％，当时标准普尔均下降23.79％。在国会授权使用美国部队之前，Burbank在伊拉克战争之前，在伊拉克战争之前，在伊拉克战争前交易到了大约20％的有形资产价值的赌注。The fund advanced 47.3 percent in 2003 on successful bets on gold and gold-mining stocks, including Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp., which rose 61 percent for the year, but returns fell back to 12 percent in 2004 — barely beating the S&P’s 10.88 percent — because of sharp declines in Chinese and Indian stocks in the spring.
Today, Burbank is going long on private placements in several Canadian mining companies, including some with concessions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the Chinese government is making major infrastructure investments. He is also buying solar and wind power companies, for which he sees a bright future as oil and gas prices soar, and manufacturers of conventional power-generation equipment. Burbank is bullish on publicly listed asset management firms in Brazil, Egypt, India, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates that manage private equity and hedge funds in addition to employing traditional strategies, in the belief that they will benefit from growing demand for alternative investments outside the U.S.
Burbank拒绝了他缺少的公司，但他将他的成功归功于能够预测金融危机 - 他认为最新的是远远不到。“次级次级是美国融资泡沫中最薄弱的联系，这是滥用世界首都的融资，”他说。“真相开始定价。这就是为什么我们要赚这么多钱。”