Alfred Winslow Jones - creator of the first Hedge Fund
The history of human development and new discoveries sometimes no longer depends on scientists who are in their offices trying to make the next breakthrough, but thanks to a coincidence of circumstances and ordinary people who were in the right place at the right time.
For example, now the word hedge fund, and the very structure of managing other people’s capital, is known to almost any person who is at least somehow involved in finance.
However, before the Second World War, no one could have imagined that hedge funds would manage global finances and assets. All this was made possible thanks to the legendary figure Alfred Winslow Jones.
early years
The future creator of hedge funds was lucky to be born into a very wealthy family; his father, Arthur Winslow Jones, was an executive director at General Electric.
The future financier was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1900. When he was just four years old, the family emigrated from Australia to the United States as his father was offered a number of positions in that country.
After receiving his diploma, it turned out that specialists of this profile were not in demand at the moment, and Alfred got a job on a ship that transported goods to different parts of the world.
It was work on the ship that allowed me to see the world and establish new connections.
In 1925, Alfred Winslow Jones was noticed by the main US foreign policy institution.
His career developed very rapidly and already in the early 1930s, he became the US vice-consul in Berlin. In Germany, Winslow Jones started a family, marrying the daughter of the German artist Blok.
The marriage did not last even a couple of years, and rather broke up when Alfred Winslow Jones married for the second time, he became a participant in the Spanish Civil War, carrying out government assignments.
There he also managed to meet Ernest Hemingway, becoming his drinking companion and friend. Many biographers and writers to this day draw a clear connection between the characters of this writer and the life story of Alfred Winslow Jones.
Hedge fund. Getting to know the exchange
The idea of a hedge fund did not appear in Jones’s head right away. Returning after all the Spanish adventures in 1941, he received a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University, while simultaneously getting a job as a journalist for the print publication Fortune.
One of the editorial tasks was to study new popular methods of stock market analysis. Jones approached the topic very responsibly and plunged almost headlong into it.
Moreover, he went so deep into the learning process that he began developing his own strategies and then testing them.
Some of the published methods turned out to be quite profitable, which became the basis for the creation of his own fund, AW Jones & Co, whose authorized capital was $100 thousand.
In just three years, the newly created fund was able to show 300% profitability, a positive example generated a lot of followers.
After some time, due to the unviability of the strategy, the fund stopped personally managing investors' funds, and instead began investing in other hedge funds. Alfred Winslow Jones died on June 2, 1989 at the age of 88.