Clarium Capital Management LLC is an American investment management and

hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as s ...

company pursuing a

global macro Global macro is an investment strategy based on the interpretation and prediction of large-scale events related to national economies, history, and international relations. The strategy typically employs forecasts and analysis of interest rate trend ...

strategy. It was founded in San FranciscoClarium Capital on Google Maps
/ref> in 2002 by

Peter Thiel Peter Andreas Thiel (; born 11 October 1967) is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in F ...

, co-founder of

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

and early investor in

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

."Thiel's Hedge Fund Plummet"
''New York Post''. Retrieved June 27, 2010. Its assets under management grew to $8 billion in 2008, after which a series of unprofitable investments and client redemptions shrank that to about $350 million as of 2011.

Function and history

Clarium is an

employee-owned Employee stock ownership, or employee share ownership, is where a company's employees own shares in that company (or in the parent company of a group of companies). US employees typically acquire shares through a share option plan. In the UK, Emp ...

firm that invests in

public equity A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (list ...

(primarily in

micro-cap Micro-Cap is a SPICE compatible analog/digital circuit simulator with an integrated schematic editor that provides an interactive sketch and simulate environment for electronics engineers. It was developed by Spectrum Software and is currently at ...

companies), fixed income, and

hedging market A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses or gains that may be incurred by a companion investment. A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insu ...

s. Unlike most funds, which charge clients about a 2% management fee of their total assets invested and an additional 20%

performance fee A performance fee is a fee that a client account or an investment fund may be charged by the investment manager that manages its assets. A performance fee may be calculated many ways. With respect to a separate account, it is often based on the ...

of the increase in the fund's

net asset value Net asset value (NAV) is the value of an entity's assets minus the value of its liabilities, often in relation to open-end, mutual funds, hedge funds, and venture capital funds. Shares of such funds registered with the U.S. Securities and Exc ...

, Clarium charges a 0% management fee and a performance fee of 25%. The company stopped working while Thiel worked at PayPal, and resumed in 2002."Clarium Capital Management LLC"
''BusinessWeek''. Retrieved June 28, 2010. In 2008, Clarium moved its headquarters from San Francisco to New York City. In June 2010 Thiel closed the New York office to consolidate the company into one location at its San Francisco office.

Performance

2002

Through a series of correct bets in the energy markets that global demand would cause an oil shortage, Clarium's 2002 performance was described by a 2009 ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' article as "impressive".

2008-2010

Clarium was down 4.5% in 2008,"Hedge Fund Portfolio Tracking: Peter Thiel's Clarium Capital, Q4 2008"
/ref> down 25% in 2009,
/ref> and down 23% in 2010.
/ref> For the first half of 2008, the fund had a YTD return of 57.9%."Clarium hedge fund posts gains of 57.9 percent"
Reuters. Retrieved June 28, 2010. At the start of 2008, the fund had $4 billion in assets under management (AUM), raised to $7.8 billion in June 2008, then dropped to $1.5 billion in July 2009, after investors withdrew money from the fund."The Quick Gutting of Peter Thiel's Clarium Capital"
. Gawker. Retrieved June 27, 2010. It lost most of its value in 2008 on large bets that the

US dollar The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...

would fall, and AUM reached $681 million in December 2010.

References

External links