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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Markets -> 
Top hedge fund bets big on China schools
    2020-11-17  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

LONG before he ran the world’s best-performing hedge fund, Qian Yongqiang chaired China’s biggest online dating service.

The Yale graduate would spend hours tracking down attractive users with suspicious profiles, sifting through accounts and deleting thousands of scammers to improve the site’s authenticity and ensure its success.

Now he’s betting that same attention to detail and strong returns will help turn his Singaporean firm into a wealth management giant.

Between January and September, QQQ Capital Management posted gains of 275 percent, making it the top hedge fund in the world, according to Eurekahedge data. QQQ says assets under management rose to about US$1 billion last month, with most of the money coming from Qian.

The gains have come with concentration risks that many fund managers would balk at: QQQ has more than a third of its assets invested in Chinese education companies.

“When we invest, we know everything about an industry, its top five people, their personality, their weakness, their greatness, everything about them,” he said.

Qian’s experience with the Chinese education system runs deep. Born in 1972, the same year U.S. President Richard Nixon visited China, Qian grew up amid the rapid economic growth. After graduating from North China University of Technology, he joined a teaching center, specializing in helping students prepare for universities abroad. Then he took the leap himself, earning an MBA from the Yale School of Management in 2000, where he now sits on its Greater China Board of Advisors.

After returning to China, Qian was coaxed back to the teaching center and made a co-founder as it expanded. It later became New Oriental Education & Technology Group, a giant in the space with a market capitalization of almost US$26 billion on the New York Stock Exchange.

After leaving New Oriental, he helped build and sell mobile content provider Atop Century Ltd. and bought a substantial stake in online dating service Jiayuan.com. He moved to Singapore in 2013.

“I wanted to start an Internet company in Singapore but it wasn’t feasible because you couldn’t find enough talented technology people,” he said. “So the only thing I could do was the financial industry.”

After five years running his own account, Qian, 48, turned professional in 2018, seeding QQQ with US$100 million of his own money. That year, the fund returned almost 40 percent despite only running for three quarters. In 2019 it gained 31 percent, outpacing the S&P 500 Index both years. The fund was granted an upgraded license by Singapore in August, removing a S$250 million (US$183 million) asset cap.

QQQ trades almost exclusively in U.S.-listed stocks, so Qian gets up at noon and eats before exercising around Singapore’s Botanic Gardens. The rest of the day is spent catching up with friends and family before starting work by 8 p.m., 90 minutes before the New York market opens. Over the next eight hours he lives online, absorbing news and company reports while trawling social media and trading stocks.

Like other hedge funds, his team of six people does plenty of alternative data analysis. They frequently trade Tesla Inc. shares, so it checks satellite pictures of car lots and shipping manifests. QQQ also has people attend after-school tutoring classes in China to gauge attendance, and buys calls and puts on the indexes to help hedge tail risk.

Qian says his edge is entrepreneurial experience from running companies, adding that every business QQQ bets on represents thousands of hours of research, giving it the confidence to make massive bets in selected areas.

(SD-Agencies)

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