Monday, August 23, 2010

Druckenmiller Quits

One of the hedge fund great is retiring. Bloomberg has the story with some interesting infos on the man who broke the ERM.
From the article:
"He made some of his biggest trades working with Soros, including one that cemented Soros’s reputation as a preeminent speculator: A $10 billion bet in September 1992 that the Bank of England would be forced to devalue the pound.

Breaking the Bank

By August of that year, Druckenmiller said he had initiated a $1.5 billion trade that would profit if the German mark rose versus sterling. He expected Europe’s exchange-rate mechanism, in which the currencies moved against each other within a limited band, to come under pressure as Germany raised interest rates to prevent inflation after reunification. Germany’s move forced the United Kingdom and other members of the ERM to decide whether to increase rates, which could damage their already troubled economies, or devalue their currencies and fall out of the ERM.

Druckenmiller said he calculated that the Bank of England didn’t have enough reserves to prop up the currency, and it couldn’t afford to raise rates. He was right, and selling by the Soros fund is credited with pushing the pound out of the ERM.

“He was so proud because until that point Soros had never made $1 billion on a bet,” said Roger Entress, a Pittsburgh surgeon and early Duquesne investor, who was golfing with Druckenmiller at the National Golf Links of America in Southampton, New York, the weekend before the devaluation."

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