Paul Tudor Jones II (born September 28, 1954)
is an American billionaire
hedge fund manager, conservationist
and philanthropist. In 1980, he founded his hedge fund,
Tudor Investment Corporation
Tudor Investment Corporation is an American investment firm based in Stamford, Connecticut. The firm invests in both public and private markets globally.
Background
In 1980, Paul Tudor Jones founded the Tudor Investment Corporation. Comm ...
, an
asset management
Asset management is a systematic approach to the governance and realization of value from the things that a group or entity is responsible for, over their whole life cycles. It may apply both to tangible assets (physical objects such as buildings ...
firm headquartered in
Stamford, Connecticut. Eight years later he founded the
Robin Hood Foundation
The Robin Hood Foundation is a charitable organization which attempts to alleviate problems caused by poverty in New York City. The organization also administers a relief fund for disasters in the New York City area. In 2010, a key supporter gave ...
, which focuses on
poverty reduction. As of April 2022, his net worth was estimated at US$7.3 billion.
Early life and education
Jones was born in
Memphis, Tennessee. Paul Tudor Jones II's father John Paul "Jack" Jones practiced transportation law from an office located next door to ''The Daily News'', a publication his family has owned and operated since 1886 and where Jack Jones was the publisher for 34 years.
His half-brother is Peter Schutt.
Jones graduated from
Presbyterian Day School
Presbyterian Day School (PDS) is a Christian private school for boys located at 4025 Poplar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38111. It is one of the largest elementary schools for boys in the United States, enrolling 600 students in grades from two-ye ...
, an all-boys elementary school, before attending
Memphis University School
, motto_translation = Truth and Honor
, streetaddress = 6191 Park Avenue
, city = Memphis
, state = Tennessee
, zipcode = 38119
, province =
, country = United States
, coordinates ...
for high school. Jones then went on to the
University of Virginia where he was a
welterweight
Welterweight is a weight class in combat sports. Originally the term "welterweight" was used only in boxing, but other combat sports like Muay Thai, taekwondo, and mixed martial arts also use it for their own weight division system to classify th ...
boxing champion.
While at the University of Virginia, Jones was president of the
Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
To pay for tuition, Jones wrote for his family's paper under the pseudonym ''Paul Eagle.''
In 1976, he earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the
University of Virginia.
In the 1980s, Jones was accepted to
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
but did not attend.
Career
1976 New York Cotton Exchange
In 1976, after graduating from the University of Virginia Jones asked his cousin
William Dunavant
William "Billy" Dunavant, Jr. (born 1932) was a cotton industrialist. He died September 11, 2021 at 88 years old.
Biography Early life
Dunavant was born on December 19, 1932 to William and Dorothy Dunavant. He was educated first at The McCallie ...
Jr. for an introduction to trading.
Dunavant was the
CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
of ''Dunavant Enterprises'', one of the world's largest cotton merchants. Dunavant sent Jones to talk with
commodity broker
A commodity broker is a firm or an individual who executes orders to buy or sell commodity contracts on behalf of the clients and charges them a commission. A firm or individual who trades for his own account is called a trader. Commodity contra ...
Eli Tullis in New Orleans. Tullis represented some of the largest cotton traders in the world. Tullis hired Jones and mentored him in trading cotton futures at the
New York Cotton Exchange
The New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE) is a commodities exchange founded in 1870 by a group of one hundred cotton brokers and merchants in New York City. In 1998, the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT) became the parent company of the New York Cotton ...
.
Eli Tullis fired Jones when he fell asleep at his desk after a night of partying in New Orleans.
Many years later, Jones served as treasurer in 1986 and then as chairman of the
New York Cotton Exchange
The New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE) is a commodities exchange founded in 1870 by a group of one hundred cotton brokers and merchants in New York City. In 1998, the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT) became the parent company of the New York Cotton ...
from August 1992 through June 1995.
1976―1980 E. F. Hutton & Co.
At 24 years old, Jones became a commodities broker for
E. F. Hutton & Co. While working at E.F. Hutton Jones met, worked with and became friends with
Glenn Dubin.
1980—present: Tudor Investment Corporation
Jones' firm manages $7.8 billion (as of June 30, 2019).
Their investment capabilities are broad and diverse, including
global macro trading, fundamental equity investing in the U.S. and Europe,
emerging markets
An emerging market (or an emerging country or an emerging economy) is a market that has some characteristics of a developed market, but does not fully meet its standards. This includes markets that may become developed markets in the future or were ...
,
venture capital, commodities, event-driven strategies, and technical trading systems.
The Tudor Group, consisting of Tudor Investment Corporation and its affiliates, is involved in active trading, investing, and research in assets across fixed income, currencies, equities, and commodities asset classes and related derivative and other instruments in the global markets for an international clientele. The investment strategies of the Tudor Group include, among others, discretionary global macro, quantitative global macro (managed futures), discretionary equity long/short, quantitative equity market neutral and growth equity.
Fees – Although the hedge fund industry standard is two percent per annum of assets under management and twenty percent of the profits, Tudor Investment Corp. charges four percent per annum of
assets under management and twenty-three percent of the profits.
1980 Founding – In 1980, Jones founded Tudor Investment Corporation,
an
asset management
Asset management is a systematic approach to the governance and realization of value from the things that a group or entity is responsible for, over their whole life cycles. It may apply both to tangible assets (physical objects such as buildings ...
firm headquartered in
Stamford, Connecticut. Dunavant and Tullis were among Tudor's first clients. In one of Princeton, New Jersey-based
Commodities Corporation's first external investments, Jones had one of his first clients
who was at the time a ''relatively unknown young quantity'' was provided $30,000 to manage.
Tudor (i.e. Jones) used his experience in trading cotton to branch into other commodities and financial instruments such as stock-index contracts and currency futures.
1987 Black Monday – One of Jones' earliest and major successes was predicting
Black Monday
Black Monday refers to specific Mondays when undesirable or turbulent events have occurred. It has been used to designate massacres, military battles, and stock market crashes.
Historic events
*1209, Dublin – when a group of 500 recently arriv ...
in 1987, tripling his money during the event due to large short positions.
In 1987, betting on a crash in the United States stock market Jones' Tudor' returned 125.9 percent after fees, earning an estimated $100 million.
Peter Borish, second-in-command to Jones at Tudor Investment Corporation, anticipated the crash in 1987 by mapping the 1987 market against the market preceding the 1929 crash.
1990s – Tudor achieved greater liquidity and thereby flexibility through Jones' chairmanship of the NYCE's Finex subsidiary.
Jones, with his colleague Hunt Taylor, was instrumental in the creation of
FINEX, the financial futures division of the New York Board of Trade, and in the development of their U.S. dollar index futures contract.
1990 – In 1990, as the Japanese equities bubble was bursting, Jones returned 87.4 percent through shorting the market.
1991 – Jones closed the Tudor Select Fund, a futures fund, and returned investor capital.
1994 SEC Settlement – In 1994, Tudor paid a fine of $800,000 (the second highest at the time) to the
SEC to settle allegations of violating (while not admitting or denying wrongdoing) the
uptick rule
The uptick rule is a trading restriction that states that short selling a stock is allowed only on an uptick. For the rule to be satisfied, the short must be either at a price above the last traded price of the security, or at the last traded pri ...
, part of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that prohibits the sale of a borrowed stock while the stock is declining.
2000s – In 2014, the ''New York Times'' noted that returns for Tudor clients had "dimmed" over the decade
following Jones' "deliberate move to trade more conservatively, fewer big interest-rate and currency moves as central banks kept short-term rates near zero and more competition as the hedge fund universe has mushroomed.
Investments
2012 - Castleton Commodities International
In October 2012, it was announced that
Glenn Dubin, Paul Tudor Jones and Timothy Barakett were among a group of investors buying the merchant energy operation Louis Dreyfus Highbridge Energy ("LDH Energy") from
Louis Dreyfus Company and
Highbridge Capital Management, a New York-based hedge fund.
The new company was named
Castleton Commodities International, LLC.
Investment philosophy
Jones's
global macro trading style is based primarily on
technical analysis, as opposed to
value investing
Value investing is an investment paradigm that involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. The various forms of value investing derive from the investment philosophy first taught by Benjamin Graham an ...
, with an emphasis on
momentum factors driving markets. In a 2000 interview, he suggested however he regretted not being more involved with venture investing in technology firms during the 1990s. Jones also stated in 2020 that he owns
bitcoin as a hedge against inflation.
Wealth
As of November 2019, ''
Forbes Magazine'' estimated his net worth to be US$5.3 billion, making him the 343rd richest person on the Forbes 400 and the 7th highest-earning hedge fund manager.
In 2019, Tudor Jones and his wife joined the
Giving Pledge
The Giving Pledge is a campaign to encourage extremely wealthy people to contribute a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. , the pledge has 236 signatories from 28 countries. Most of the signatories of the pledge are billionaires, an ...
, vowing to give most of their wealth to charitable causes.
When Tudor Jones and his wife joined the Giving Pledge, they said "we were both raised in the Church," and cited several Bible references supporting the decision.
As of 2006 Jones lived in
Greenwich, Connecticut.
Conservation
In 1990, Jones pleaded guilty to illegally destroying 86 acres of protected
wetlands on his Maryland Eastern Shore hunting estate with 1,400 cubic yards of gravel, without a permit.
Jones was ordered to pay $1 million fine and $1 million in restitution to the
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) is an American foundation that was chartered by Congress in 1984 to increase the resources available for the conservation of the nation's fish, wildlife, plants and habitats.
Authority
The Natio ...
and by pleading guilty avoided a possible one-year jail term for violating the
Federal Clean Water Act.
In 1993, Jones co-founded the
Everglades Foundation, which advocates for conservation of the
Everglades
The Everglades is a natural region of tropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large drainage basin within the Neotropical realm. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimm ...
, tropical wetlands in
Florida.
He chairs the organization's board, which includes
Jimmy Buffett
James William Buffett (born December 25, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and businessman. He is best known for his music, which often portrays an "island escapism" lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffet ...
,
Jack Nicklaus,
David Lawrence Jr.
David Lawrence Jr. (born March 5, 1942 in New York City, New York) is an American nationally known newspaper editor and publisher who retired at the age of 56 and subsequently became a leading national advocate for children, especially in the area ...
,
Jon L. Mills, and
William Wrigley Jr. II, among others.
In 2006, the New York Times described Jones as an ''American conservationist'' in reporting that in 2002, the Tanzanian government leased him the Grumeti reserve in Tanzania's western
Serengeti
The Serengeti ( ) ecosystem is a geographical region in Africa, spanning northern Tanzania. The protected area within the region includes approximately of land, including the Serengeti National Park and several game reserves. The Serenget ...
.
The New York Times explains the conservation reporting "The reserves are really three contiguous hunting blocks with Sasakwa at the center: Grumeti Game Reserve, Fort Ikoma Open Area and Ikorongo Game Reserve. Hunting blocks are supposed to generate income for the central government and local districts through the sale of hunting licenses and trophy fees. Grumeti Reserves would make no financial sense, as far as the government is concerned, if the hunting revenues from these blocks simply vanished. Jones’s solution has been to pay the hunting fees and nearly eliminate hunting."
Philanthropy
In 1986, after watching an episode of CBS News'
60 Minutes
''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique sty ...
about businessman and philanthropist
Eugene Lang, Jones adopted a sixth grade class in
Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
Bedford–Stuyvesant (), colloquially known as Bed–Stuy, is a neighborhood in the northern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Bedford–Stuyvesant is bordered by Flushing Avenue to the north (bordering Williamsburg), Classon Av ...
at an underperforming public school. Jones guaranteed college scholarships to students that graduated from high school.
His idea was this would be an incentive to students to engage in academics with his goal being that 90% of those students successfully complete high school. However, only 33% of the students in the class eventually graduated from high school. Jones believed he "vastly underestimated both the academic and social challenges facing
he students in the class he adopted and his program was "completely ill-equipped to
elp them
Elp is a small village in the Dutch province of Drenthe. It is a part of the municipality of Midden-Drenthe, and lies about 15 km south of Assen.
The village was first mentioned in 1362 as "in Elpe". The etymology is unclear.
Elp was home t ...
in an efficient fashion." In his 2009 speech, Jones explained that this major failure on his part taught him lessons he's applied in subsequent education efforts.
In 2009, Jones delivered a
commencement speech
A commencement speech or commencement address is a speech given to graduating students, generally at a university, although the term is also used for secondary education institutions and in similar institutions around the world.
The commenceme ...
at the
Buckley School about his experiences with failure and comebacks. He talked about failing to get 86 underserved students into college despite expense and effort later helped him start one of the most successful charter schools in New York.
In 2004, Jones founded the Excellence Charter School, the country's first all-boys charter school, located in the
Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of
Brooklyn, New York.
He founded and chaired the Bedford Stuyvesant I Have A Dream Foundation, which puts local students in colleges.
University of Virginia giving
Jones has made large donations to his alma mater, the
University of Virginia, including a $44 million donation, which went to the construction of a new basketball arena, named the
John Paul Jones Arena
John Paul Jones Arena, or JPJ, is a multi-purpose arena owned by the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. Since November 2006, it serves as the home to the Virginia Cavaliers men's and women's basketball teams, as well as for co ...
, in honor of his father, an attorney who also attended the University of Virginia.
In April 2012, UVA announced the creation of a new Contemplative Sciences Center through a $12 million gift from Jones and his wife, Sonia.
Robin Hood Foundation
Jones is the founder of the
Robin Hood Foundation
The Robin Hood Foundation is a charitable organization which attempts to alleviate problems caused by poverty in New York City. The organization also administers a relief fund for disasters in the New York City area. In 2010, a key supporter gave ...
, a charitable organization backed mainly by hedge fund operators
that attempts to alleviate problems caused by poverty in New York City.
Other founding members include
Peter Borish and
Glenn Dubin.
Just Capital
He set up the nonprofit Just Capital to help Americans learn about companies that are considered "just". The organization uses data to discover which companies are most involved with the priorities Americans find most important. The nonprofit uses an annual, multi-phase survey to find out what these priorities are. Just Capital also operates a for profit ETF (exchange traded fund) comprising only companies believed to be "just".
Controversy
In June 2012, Jones was reportedly a key figure in the controversial ousting of
University of Virginia President
Teresa A. Sullivan. He penned an editorial supporting her resignation, citing the school's poor academic rankings, low salary for staff and other perceived problems On June 26, 2012, The University of Virginia Board of Visitors unanimously voted to reinstate Sullivan.
In 2013, the Washington Post posted a video to their site showing Jones at an April 2013 closed door investment roundtable at the University of Virginia responding to a question on the lack of diversity on the panel.
Jones answered ''saying that having a baby hurts the ability of women to focus on macro trading, where investors seek to profit from global equity, bond, currency and commodities markets.''
The soundbite from Jones' five minute answer that received attention was: "As soon as that baby’s lips touched that girl’s bosom, forget it".
The Washington Post reported Jones' answer as meaning that: ''female traders are just as capable as male traders, but he believes they lose their focus once they become mothers.''
Jones' comments quickly drew criticism from fellow traders, members of the media and others regarding mothers in his field of global macro trading.
Jones apologized soon afterwards
which did not cease the criticism he received.
Jones in a written statement sent to the Washington Post Jones stated that ''"My off-the-cuff remarks at the University of Virginia were with regard to global macro traders, who are on-call 24/7 and of whom there are likely only a few thousand successful practitioners in the world today. Macro trading requires a high degree of skill, focus and repetition. Life events, such as birth, divorce, death of a loved one and other emotional highs and lows are obstacles to success in this specific field of finance."''
Jones was a friend film producer
Harvey Weinstein and a member of the board of
The Weinstein Company. In 2017, as Weinstein came under increasing pressure for sexual misconduct allegations, Jones wrote him an email encouraging him that the scrutiny would soon end, and advising him on how he could revive his reputation. Weinstein was convicted in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years for sexual assault. Jones distanced himself from Weinstein in a written statement, stating: "Harvey was a friend I believed too long and defended too long."
Reputation
In 1987,
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educati ...
produced a documentary entitled 'Trader' which focused on Jones's activities. The film shows Jones as a young man predicting the 1987 crash, using methods similar to those of market forecaster
Robert Prechter. Although the video was shown on public television in November 1987, Jones requested in the 1990s that the documentary be removed from circulation.
The video has surfaced from time to time on different video sharing and torrent sites, but has often been taken down shortly thereafter due to copyright claims. Various theories exist as to why Jones does not support the film.
Despite the film's showing a positive approach to risk and client care, as well as showcasing Jones's charity work, it has been suggested that the film may reveal trading secrets.
In 1988, at the age of 33, "The Wall Street Journal dedicated a front-page story to Jones, calling him “the most-watched, most-talked-about man on Wall Street.”"
Low profile within financial media circles beginning in the late 1980s through to a report in 1997, Jones kept interviews with financial reporters to a minimum; while keeping a low profile in financial circles he was visible appearing on
Larry King Live, promoting his ''Save Our Everglades'' campaign and the Robin Hood Foundation.
In 2019, Reuters has described Jones as ‘one of the giants’ and reported that Jones is considered a legend among macro traders.
In 2008, he was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame along with
Alfred Jones,
Bruce Kovner
Bruce Stanley Kovner (born 1945) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is chairman of CAM Capital, which he established in January 2012 to manage his investment, trading and business activities. From 1983 through 2 ...
,
David Swensen,
George Soros,
Jack Nash,
James Simons,
Julian Roberston,
Kenneth Griffin,
Leon Levy,
Louis Bacon
Louis Moore Bacon (born July 25, 1956) is an American investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He is the founder and chief executive of Moore Capital Management.
''Forbes Magazine'' estimates his net worth to be US$1.81 billion, ma ...
,
Michael Steinhardt,
Seth Klarman and
Steven A. Cohen
Steven A. Cohen (born June 11, 1956) is an American hedge fund manager and owner of the New York Mets of Major League Baseball since September 14, 2020, owning roughly 97.2% of the team. He is the founder of hedge fund Point72 Asset Manageme ...
.
In 2019, he received the Golden Plate Award of the
American Academy of Achievement
The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet o ...
, presented by Awards Council member Dr.
Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, during the International Achievement Summit in New York City.
Personal life
By the mid-1980s, Jones as reported by ''Institutional Investor'' magazine was "developing a reputation for courting models and partying long into the night" and the ''Wall Street Journal'' ran a front-page article referring to Jones as Quotron Man in a profile covering his lifestyle.
This was transpiring in 1987, as there was a general backlash against excesses on Wall Street.
In 1988,
Jones married Australian-born Sonia Klein, a New York–based yoga entrepreneur at a wedding in Memphis.
In the early 1990s, Jones moved to
Greenwich, Connecticut.
They have four children —
Caroline
Caroline may refer to:
People
*Caroline (given name), a feminine given name
* J. C. Caroline (born 1933), American college and National Football League player
* Jordan Caroline (born 1996), American (men's) basketball player
Places Antarctica
* ...
, Dorothy "Dottie", Chrissy, and Jack.
Jones has encouraged his three daughters to go into macro trading.
He resides in Palm Beach, Florida.
Politics and associations
A political independent, Jones has donated money to numerous
Democratic and
Republican candidates. In 2012 he donated $200,000 to
Mitt Romney. During the
2008 presidential election, Jones hosted a 500-person fundraiser at his Greenwich home for then-candidate
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
.
Jones also donated to
John McCain and
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 19 ...
's presidential campaigns.
Jones previously served as a director of the
Futures Industry Association
The Futures Industry Association (FIA) is a trade association in the United States composed of futures commission merchants. A futures commission merchant is analogous to a broker; they are entities that accept orders and payment for commodity fu ...
and was instrumental in the creation and development of an education-arm for the association—the then Futures Industry Institute, a research institute later renamed the Institute for Financial Markets based in Washington D.C. Mr. Jones was also an advocate for the design and implementation of the first ethics training course that became the standard for exchange membership on all futures exchanges in the United States.
See also
*
List of University of Virginia people
This page is a partial list of notable alumni and faculty of the University of Virginia.
Rectors and members of the Board of Visitors
* Thomas Jefferson – 3rd President of the United States (1801–1809); founder, Rector (1819–1826)
* Jame ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Paul Tudor
1954 births
American billionaires
American financial company founders
American financiers
American hedge fund managers
American investors
American money managers
American stock traders
EF Hutton people
Living people
People from Memphis, Tennessee
Stockbrokers
University of Virginia alumni
American philanthropists
Giving Pledgers
21st-century philanthropists