(Dealbook) The sun rises and sets. The tides come in and go out. The moon waxes and then wanes. Jeff Vinik launches hedge funds, and then closes them.
That this day would come has always been inevitable. Jeff Vinik has opened and closed hedge funds twice before, with the end coming shortly after Vinik sounds most excited about his line of work and announces plans to raise a ton of money. Still, we have to admit we weren’t prepared for the third time to come up cursed quite so quickly.
Billionaire investor Jeffrey Vinik said he is closing his stock-picking hedge fund less than eight months after he started it…
Mr. Vinik had raised $465 million as of March 1, according to a regulatory filing, at fees discounted from what the firm originally offered. It now manages about $550 million….
“I honestly believed, obviously foolishly, that I could raise $3 billion by March 1,” Mr. Vinik said. “What I learned after probably 75 meetings is, the hedge-fund industry of 2019 is very different than the hedge-fund industry when I started in 1996, and it’s even very different from the hedge-fund industry when I closed in 2013.”
Again, this from a man who said in January of this year, “I am committed to this, and I am extremely hungry. We won’t shut down again.” In any event, Vinik Asset Management 3.0 won’t be dragging this out until next year.
Investors will be redeemed out of the fund Nov. 15, the letter said.
Anyway, let’s see what happens in May once Vinik’s Tampa Bay Lightning choke their way out of the Stanley Cup playoffs once again.
