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 the work on the ship that allowed to see the world, to establish new connections.
In 1925, Alfred Winclow Jones was seen from the General Institute of the United States engaged in foreign policy.
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 exist for a couple of years, and rather broke up when Alfred Winclow Jones married a second time, he became a participant, a civil war in Spain, fulfilling the tasks of the government.
There he managed to get acquainted with Ernest Hemingway, becoming his drinking companion and friend. Many biographers and writers to this day have a clear relationship between the characters of this writer and the life story of Alfred Winclow Jones.
Hedz Fund. Acquaintance with the exchange
The idea of a hedge fund in Jones's head did not appear immediately. Having returned after all the Spanish adventure in 1941, he received a doctoral degree in sociology at Columbia University, while simultaneously got a job as a journalist in the Fortune print publication.
One of the editorial tasks was the study of new popular methods of analysis of the stock market. Jones reacted very responsibly to the topic and plunged almost with his head.
Moreover, he so deepened into the process of studying that he began to develop his own strategies with their subsequent testing.
Some of the published techniques were quite profitable, which became the basis for creating the AW Jones & Co fund, whose authorized capital was 100 thousand dollars.
In just three years, the newly created fund was able to show 300% of profitability, a positive example gave rise to a lot of followers.
After some time, due to the non-viable strategy, the Fund stopped engaged in the personal management of investor funds, and instead began to invest funds in other hedge. Alfred Winclow Jones died on June 2 in 1989 at the age of 88.