저자: DavidTepper · 외국인
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David Tepper의 투자 실적과 전략을 소개한다. 2024년 중국 주식 비중을 크게 늘렸고(알리바바, 핀둬둬, 중국 ETF), 중국 주식이 PER 기준으로 여전히 합리적이라고 본다. 미국 시장은 과거 밸류에이션 기준 고평가로 보며 엔비디아의 장기 성장에는 의문을 표한다. 비트코인은 선호하지 않고 금은 일부 보유를 고려한다고 언급한다. 주요 원칙으로 밸류에이션·거시환경 고려, 역발상 투자, 확신 있는 집중 매수, 시장 적응, 교육, 이해 가능한 자산 투자, 회복력과 윤리를 제시한다.
다듬은 글
위 원문은 영어 자막이므로, 요청하신 대로 영어 원문을 영어로 다듬어 정리했습니다. 음성인식 오류(예: "Apalusa"→Appaloosa, "Teper"→Tepper, "ETFXI"→ETF 등)는 고쳤습니다.
David Tepper is one of the best investors of recent years. As of mid-2024 his fortune was about $21.3 billion, which placed him 93rd among the richest people in the world. His investment fund, Appaloosa Management, has delivered extraordinary profits for many years, reaching an annual return after fees of 23%.
He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. At Goldman Sachs he managed the junk bond operations, and his management was fundamental in keeping the firm afloat during the 1987 crisis.
In 1992 he decided to go independent after being rejected twice as a possible partner at Goldman Sachs. In the early days he operated with his own resources from the office of a friendly manager, Michael Price, who was also a Goldman Sachs client. One of the operations that helped improve his reputation was turning $3 million into $7 million in just over a year.
Thanks to that reputation, he raised $57 million to found Appaloosa Management in 1993. By 1996 he was already managing $800 million. Later the fund became one of the most important in the world, managing up to $20 billion.
A few months ago I reviewed the current state of this super-investor's theses. In September of the previous year, Tepper was quite positive on stocks in China and Europe. Among the factors he considered were double-digit growth rates at large companies listed on the Chinese stock exchange, share buyback plans, and the government's proposed stimulus measures to encourage economic growth, which pointed to a good performance of the Chinese economy in the coming years.
Tepper noted that at that time the European index traded at about 14 times earnings while the American index traded at 22 times. He said Europe looked interesting, a thesis he was undoubtedly right about, and he warned that the American stock market was not cheap, since historical valuations showed it to be overvalued.
He defines himself as a value investor. The previous year he said he did not like the American market from a value perspective, but he was not necessarily going to sell positions en masse, nor would he feel comfortable shorting or investing against the market, since the economy was relatively good.
Even so, in the first quarter of 2025 he increased his position in Nvidia. The previous year, Tepper had said he had some doubts about the long-term growth potential of this company. In the short term, for 2024 and 2025, the company's performance could well be quite positive, but in the medium term, for 2026 and 2027, the outlook was not entirely clear.
In his comments on this company he also made clear one of his investment principles: skepticism. He did not fully believe his analysts, and sometimes he did not even fully trust himself, since projecting the profits of technology companies in the coming years is complex.
By February of this year, Tepper had increased his bets on China, allocating 37% of his portfolio to Chinese stocks, and even said he was willing to buy everything related to China. In the first quarter he increased his stake in Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce company, known as the "Asian Amazon," by 18.4%.
This company has had a tremendous rally, gaining over 80% in the last six months. Its P/E multiple is currently about 21 times, well above its recent levels. The chart shows that Tepper made large purchases, mainly the previous year, taking advantage of low prices, but it also shows that in 2021 and 2022 he sold positions to capture the good share prices.
Another of his main positions is Pinduoduo, another e-commerce company, which represents 8% of his portfolio. Unlike Alibaba, Tepper began investing in this company in 2023, with significant purchase volumes in the third quarter of the previous year. Although it is a fairly volatile stock, its appreciation since September of the previous year is over 40%. The company currently trades at a reasonable P/E of about 12 times.
One particularly interesting option is the ETF (FXI), which brings together a good number of companies from the Chinese stock exchange. Tepper managed to buy at practically the lowest prices of the previous year, and the ETF's value has already risen over 60% in the last year. Its P/E ratio is 11 times, which shows that despite the tremendous rally there are still reasonable multiples, should the economic recovery of the Asian giant consolidate.
Beyond arguing that China is still an interesting investment opportunity, let us look at the principles and strategy that have allowed him to succeed.
Although Tepper does not state it explicitly, in his comments he treats the market multiple as an element to weigh when making investment decisions. As a value investor he seeks good companies at reasonable prices.
He also takes into account the economic cycle, the Fed's monetary policy, and expectations for growth and inflation. He is sometimes on the lookout, waiting for markets to show signs of an upward trend before taking positions aggressively. So while he is primarily focused on fundamentals, he also performs technical market analysis.
In his early days he had a rather aggressive style, even buying shares of distressed companies. He pays attention to relevant news not only from the United States but from the world's major economies, such as decisions by the Bank of Japan, and he gains in-depth knowledge of expectations regarding Fed rate moves in the coming months.
The second principle is contrarianism: he does not follow the crowd. This was evident when he invested a large part of his portfolio in China at a time when others saw the country as a bad place to invest.
Another example is the 2008 crisis, when Tepper invested in companies that most of the market viewed negatively, such as banks, for instance Bank of America. His excellent decisions allowed his fund to generate more than $7 billion in profits during the 2008 crisis. Some analysts rate Tepper's trades during that crisis among the best in history.
He makes full use of crisis situations and selects high-value companies. In these difficult times the Appaloosa fund takes on the risk of investing in the debt of companies with financial difficulties in order to achieve high returns later. For example, he made successful investments in bonds of distressed companies such as Enron, WorldCom, and Marconi. His strategy is in some measure opportunistic. In 2023, for instance, Tepper bought bonds and preferred stock of the bankrupt parent company of Silicon Valley Bank.
When Tepper decides a stock is an investment, he bets in large volumes, as seen in his purchases of Alibaba. But the strategy is not only about investing with strong positions; it also requires the willpower to hold through fear, doubt, and uncertainty.
As his China positions have also shown, Tepper has the nerve to stick with his bets for years, even when short-term results fall short. This coincides with Buffett's approach of investing heavily in the strongest ideas, which is reflected in his portfolio: each of the top five positions carries a high weighting. His largest holding is Alibaba, with more than 15% of the portfolio.
Although Tepper sustains his investments for years, he is a dynamic investor who adjusts his preferences to market conditions. For example, in 2009 a large part of his portfolio was in financial and commercial companies, and the only technology company was Microsoft. By 2021, the top five holdings of the Appaloosa fund were technology companies that had delivered excellent results in the market.
Many funds that achieved excellent results in the late 1990s and early 2000s have lost influence because they failed to adapt to the market, and their returns have since fallen even below the S&P 500 index.
Tepper believes academic training is important because it provides an understanding of the underlying elements of stock markets. Knowledge also allows one to properly calculate the prices of the assets or shares one plans to invest in.
Training also helps one understand moments of change in monetary policy, such as rate increases and periods of quantitative easing, and to understand financial crises and their consequences. Another key element is understanding how a company's accounting and finances work, as well as how options work.
Tepper acknowledges that he is not an expert in blockchain or cryptocurrencies, and accepts that they are not for him. He finds it hard to analyze Bitcoin's price movements, since it is not clear why the price rises or falls. Those moves may be due to supply and demand, among other factors, but for him these assets have no fundamental value beyond the value of mining. Trading is possible by carefully analyzing the information that drives this market, but Tepper admits he does not like trading Bitcoin.
His largest investment in this asset was about $50 million, which may reflect his lack of confidence in this type of investment. Contrary to expectations, he admits he does not like gold, though he does consider holding some in his portfolio.
Tepper explains that when you experience disappointments and failures, it is important to recover and move on. We will all have problems and things will go wrong, but what defines a person is how they recover and keep going. He believes one must keep learning in order to move forward.
When you have a good idea and the knowledge behind what you are doing, he says, you should persevere. He also considers ethics fundamental, in investing and in life: do not do things that are not right. And he believes one must be very careful when hiring people, since that ability is an undervalued asset.
Finally, while Tepper has increased his exposure to China, he still keeps a significant share of his portfolio in North American companies, especially technology companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, AMD, Micron, Nvidia, and Uber, among the main ones.
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Note: the original video description mentions links to a course on technical and fundamental analysis and a trading platform; those are not part of the spoken content, so I have omitted them.
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