Paul Tudor Jones

Paul Tudor Jones II interview by
Joel Ramin
January 13, 2000

I applied to Harvard Business School, got accepted and was about to go. I literally was packed up to go and then I thought, 'this is crazy', because for what I'm doing here, they're not going to teach me anything. This skill set is not something that they teach in business school. So I didn't go, I stayed, but I was really bored because there wasn't the personal interaction that was something that I craved and having colleagues and being in a clean atmosphere and that was when I started my fund. All through growing up I've been involved in team sports and fraternities and in school I was involved in a whole variety of activities all of which were team oriented and when I was on my own I was printing money every month, but I wasn't getting the psychic satisfaction from it
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Q: Are you more naturally bearish or bullish?

Paul Tudor Jones: Bearish, I think. I would have difficulty asking anyone to pay 10 or 20 times earnings for my earnings capability for the rest of my life. I would think you're crazy to do that even though it might be a great deal, so the concept of paying one-hundred-and-something times earnings for any company for me is just anathema. Having said that, at the end of the day, your job is to buy what goes up and to sell what goes down so really who gives a damn about PE's? If it's going up you're supposed to be long it. But there's no question that it's just easier for me to leverage with some degree of conviction the short side of some markets.
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Q: Let's play a word association game. I'll say a word and you say whatever comes to mind.

Q: Technical analysis

Paul Tudor Jones: Made well over half the money that I've made in my lifetime.

Q: Fundamental Analysis

Paul Tudor Jones: Made the rest.

Q: Are you better at one or the other?

Paul Tudor Jones: Probably technical analysis.

Q: Market efficiency

Paul Tudor Jones: No such thing.

Q: Long Term Capital Management

Paul Tudor Jones: Icarus.

Q: Black Monday

Paul Tudor Jones: It was like watching a natural disaster from the sidelines. I was intimately involved in that day, but the macro implications of what was happening overwhelmed any personal considerations that I had.

Q: Warren Buffet

Paul Tudor Jones: His aversion to paying taxes made him a great investor.

A good summary of hiw rules can be found at Wikipedia.