Hedge Fund Legend Druckenmiller Shares His Top Secrets For 30% Returns

Legendary hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller is known for making the right bets at the right time.

He came to fame In the early ’90s after a short against the British pound earned George Soros, his boss at the time, over $10 billion overnight.

Since then, his hedge fund Duquesne Capital, now called Duquesne Family Office, has made an average of 30% returns a year.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, 70-year-old Druckenmiller boasts a fortune of almost $10 billion.

In a CNBC interview from Tuesday morning, Druckenmiller said he’s not sure how he was able to achieve such impressive returns on a consistent basis for all these years.

“I have no idea. I don’t know how I did it. So, I don’t even know who that person was,” he said.

Yet throughout the years, the investor has shared enough advice and other information that his investment philosophy can be pieced together.

According to SEC filings, the Duquesne Family Office’s largest equity investment by the end of 2023 was Microsoft Corp MSFT, owning more than 1 million shares, reaching 13% of the fund’s holdings.

Other large holdings include Korean e-commerce company Coupang Inc CPNG, NVIDIA Corp NVDA, Eli Lilly And Co LLY, Teck Resources Ltd Class B TECK and Seagate Technology Holdings PLC STX.

Druckenmiller mentioned he exited some of his Nvidia positions after the stock went from $150 to $900 in just a few months.

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• Learning from the best beats a high pay: “If you’re early on in your career and they give you a choice between a great mentor or higher pay, take the mentor every time. It’s not even close,” said Druckenmiller, according to QuoteWise.

Druckenmiller worked as a fund manager for the Quantum Fund, under the guidance of billionaire philanthropist Soros for over 12 years between 1988 and 2000.

• Bet on your convictions: In 2008, Druckenmiller said he learned a lot from Soros, but not what he initially expected to learn.

“I did not learn what makes the yen go up or down, or what makes the stock market go up or down. Soros’s great gift was how to use leverage, and how much money to have down based on the risk/reward and your sense of conviction. His view on the yen or the euro was better than random, but not much. And yet he was still one of the great money managers ever because he knew how to bet his convictions.”

• Sometimes it’s okay to put all your eggs in one basket: “The mistake I’d say 98% of money managers and individuals make is they feel like they got to be playing in a bunch of stuff. If you really see it, put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket very carefully.” 

• Look ahead, always: “Never, ever invest in the present. It doesn’t matter what a company’s earning, what they have earned… you have to visualize the situation 18 months from now, and whatever that is, that’s where the price will be.”

• Diversify across asset classes, not just across industries: “I was also lucky to travel across asset classes. I traded commodities, currencies, bonds and equities, and it gave me discipline, if I didn’t have a good idea in equities, I was happy to have no equities.”

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