Julian Robertson, 90, Dies; Brought Hedge Funds Into the Mainstream - The New York Times

His driving insight was that one could make money just as easily by betting that a company’s stock would fall as by betting that it would rise. By Robert D. Hershey Jr. Julian Robertson, a Wall Street investor who with a handful of others pushed short-selling into the mainstream, helping to create the modern hedge fund industry, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 90. His son Alex said the cause was cardiac complications. Two years before abruptly closing down his pre-eminent Tiger Management Corporation investment stable in 2000, Mr. Robertson was overseeing some $22 billion in a half-dozen funds containing a wide assortment of long and short positions in stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies from around the globe. He continued to manage his own multibillion-dollar fortune well into his 80s. A courtly and smartly tailored North Carolinian, Mr. Robertson was not only a champion investor — a Business Week cover once hailed him as “the best stock picker on the Street” —

His driving insight was that one could make money just as easily by betting that a company’s stock would fall as by betting that it would rise. By Robert D. Hershey Jr. Julian Robertson, a Wall Street investor who with a handful of others pushed short-selling into the mainstream, helping to create the modern hedge fund industry, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 90. His son Alex said the cause was cardiac complications. Two years before abruptly closing down his pre-eminent Tiger Management Corporation investment stable in 2000, Mr. Robertson was overseeing some $22 billion in a