In the hedge fund business, one of the primary traits managers hear about is perseverance, but accompanying that advice comes a stellar example of what can be accomplished when a manager actually perseveres.
In an interview with Hedge Fund Alpha, Ardal Loh-Gronager, founder and managing partner of Loh-Gronager Partners and author of The Perceptive Investor, shared what’s worked and what hasn’t, how perseverance enabled him to get an exclusive tour with BYD, and details on what happened when Sir Isaac Newton lost his fortune — twice.
Loh-Gronager Partners is a London-based investment partnership that launched in 2021.
Background on Ardal Loh-Gronager
Born in the U.K., Loh-Gronager is actually half Danish and had what he describes as a “global upbringing,” attending eight schools across six different countries growing up.
“I lived in 12 houses, so you could say I had a very mixed upbringing,” he added. “I lived in Europe, Asia and in Australia. And growing up and moving between countries and attending so many schools and so many different cultures, that exposed me to a diversity of views, education systems and ways of thinking.”
Lessons learned from an early age
Loh-Gronager witnessed early in life how different societies handle business, governance, responsibility and opportunity. He feels those early experiences taught him adaptability and curiosity as to why things are the way they are. Loh-Gronager also learned humility.
“Just because you live in one system doesn't mean that that is the best system or the best way that things should be done,” he said. “And I think that those are all essential traits in investing, where you have to be open to multiple perspectives, but you also have to be resilient and flexible in the face of constant change and comfortable with the unfamiliar, which enabled me to build an entrepreneurial mindset, seeing challenges and changes as opportunities, definitely being comfortable with starting from scratch, whether that's in a new school or a new business in a new geography.”
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A natural contrarian
Loh-Gronager feels that having a global childhood helped shape him into someone who doesn’t accept the status quo. He’s a natural contrarian who likes to question assumptions, and he values the combination of business sense and cultural awareness.
“I think that comes into long-term thinking, which is something I'm always wondering when I meet the management teams of businesses that we're looking to invest in or that we do invest in, to see whether they still have that same global outlook, that entrepreneurialism, that drive, that hunger that moves them forward and their businesses forward over time,” Loh-Gronager said.
He bought his first stock in March 2009, a month off the bottom of the Global Financial Crisis. In hindsight, that was good timing, but in that moment, no one knew it would end within six weeks.
“I look back on that time; I am a deep-seated contrarian investor,” Loh-Gronager said. “I view volatility as opportunity. And if you know the businesses that you're investing in, the share price, especially when it decreases substantially for external factors, in this case, the 2009 Global Financial Crisis, that's when real wealth is created: by owning great businesses when their share price is beaten down by extraneous factors and holding them for the long term.”
Las Vegas Sands Casino
Loh-Gronager’s first stock was Las Vegas Sands Casinos. At the time in 2009, Sheldon Adelson was one of the world’s wealthiest men. Loh-Gronager had been through Asia, including to Singapore, and he’d seen the Singapore Sands Casino being built.
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