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Christopher Tsai

lines on the record: 132
first: 2024-05-26
most recent: 2024-05-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“In deal making. So I think that probably the public doesn't really understand that. But most of the money that he's made was in deal making. I think that if I looked at his trades and publicly traded equities, not so good. But he was involved early in some private companies that became public and then he wound up holding them for a very long periods of time because he was friends with the founder and the CEO and he just would not sell something that he was close to the CEO. So that kind of Forced him to stick with these holdings. And I can give you a bunch of examples, but he made most of his money in these private deals.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I realized that this is like this is not the way I want to think about investing. And I learned that very early. That is not the way I want to think about investing. That is not the way I want to spend my time in my life. And fortunately, I was reading Ben Graham and Peter Lynch and Phil Fisher and a bunch of other investment books by other managers. And I just gravitated to call it the world of value investing. And so we went in very, very, very different ways. But to answer your question, like I learned some very, very important things from him. I learned not to dismiss a company as a potential investment just because on the surface its valuation looks expensive. The best investments that he's made in his life, and most of the money, by the way, he's made”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've got the 10 queues, the 10Ks do all my research. I came back to him a couple weeks later, three weeks later. And I said, I really like this idea. We should buy some for the foundation because I was involved with his foundation and on the investment side. And he said, don't worry about that. I sold that stock already. So he had already bought some, which I did not know. And then he already had sold it.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, the more I realize in life, like people are full of contradictions, right? They're just full of contradictions and they say one thing, they behave another way. What I learned very early, because I did work for my father in my teens, in which he was probably one of the hardest bosses I had. I had two internships, one with Mario Gabelli, one with John Levin, who was a partner with Michael Steinhardt. Those were tough bosses. And I'm still in touch with them today. But my father was a really tough boss. And I was looking at a company once, and it was a medical products company. And he said, you know, do some research, come back to me. Let's talk about it. And in those days, you know, you couldn't just go online and just download everything. At least I didn't have that access. So you call up the company.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they just raked in this money. The management company, signed management research, was extremely profitable. He was able to sell that for something like $30 million from what I understand. In present value terms, that's a lot of money, right? And he used that as the seed capital to do everything else that he did in life. A small part of his career, but a very meaningful one in terms of being able to have that seed capital now to go on and do many, many more things.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His approach was very much momentum based as you said. It's certainly not my approach, but you have to also keep in mind that, look, this was a very, now I'm trying to be fair to him. This was a very small part, a small but meaningful part of his career. In other words, these 10 or so years in fund management at Fidelity, at Manhattan Fund, maybe a few more than 10 years, but not that many more than 10 years, that allowed him, he was smart enough to capitalize, he was early to this kind of momentum trade. He was smart enough to raise a fund, raise $250 million during the period when the commissions, by the way, the load was like six, seven, or eight percent or something like something huge like that.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of his friends, like Barry Tish, who became my sister's godfather and Harold Janine, who eventually ran ITT and all these brilliant businessmen who were invested with my father immediately left. So unfortunately, yeah, the public lost whatever was 90%. And I spoke to my father about that and he says, well, the number was less than that because there was a dividend. But regardless, it's a lot of money. And the reason why they lost that is because underpinning these investments that were in the fund, like Polaroid and LTV, as you mentioned, had probably very little intrinsic value relative.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, let me first start with the side that would be most favorable to my father, and then I'll give you another perspective. From what I understand that is that my father stopped managing that fund. He was still the management company was still involved. The sale wasn't completed, but my father had stepped back from the portfolio management of that fund. And all of his friends who were in that fund had left. So when my father announced the sale,”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It to CNA Financial right at the top of the market. And of course we know what happens afterwards. There were other momentum types of managers because he gets labeled with the momentum crowd, the two Freds, the Fred Carr. And they disappeared. But my father was unique in the sense that he took his capital from the sale and he went into entirely different direction, which was building businesses.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Amount of capital. So they launched with about 250 million of capital, which was multiples of what he expected to raise and was the most successful offering in American mutual fund history at the time. So he launched his Manhattan Fund after a great performance record at Fidelity into a bull market. And he was always very good at timing his purchases and sales, whether that be skill, whether it be luck, whether it would be, whether it was a combination of both, which probably was a combination of both. Regardless, he was very good at that. And more capital flew into the fund, and he decided to exit by selling the management company, which was sign management and research. It was a management company from Manhattan Fund.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reputation while he was at Fidelity, getting to know all the brokers and broker dealers throughout the country. So when he was ready to leave Fidelity to start his own thing, he had already the kind of network. So he leaves Fidelity, launches Manhattan phone. And so as you're driving into Manhattan today, you go over the Tribor Bridge onto just before the FDR, which is now renamed. And there's a big billboard. And, you know, these big billboards that align the highway. So my father had that big, big billboard as you come in from what I was standing. He had advertisements from Manhattan Fund. And he advertised all over the place. So the advertisements plus his relationships allowed Manhattan fun to launch with a huge”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which back then, when they had 500 million under management, it sounds less impressive than it is now. But he wanted the top role. And Ed Johnston, the senior, was he approached Ed Johnson and Ed Johnson said, you're never going to have the top role because my son Ned is going to take over. So that's what I understand to have transpired. And you mentioned my grandmother being influential in these decisions. And he spoke to his mother about almost every decision that he made, these 100 plus deals, particularly this role at Fidelity. And my dad always wanted to run the show. And so that's really why he left. Plus, he had circled the country, I mean, countless times, going to all these regional broker dealers, traveling to hundreds of cities, building his”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before we get to Manhattan Fund, just quickly, so why did he leave Fidelity? That was always a question that I had for him. Because from what I understand, he was a 25% owner of Fidelity.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was, I think, 29 or so around that time, the role of running the Fidelity Capital Fund, Fidelity Investments was pretty small at that time. They'd be like, I don't know the exact figure, but I'm guessing maybe 50 million, 100 million in AUM.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“John today, John spoke at my father's funeral, but John and my father did the first real block trades. So they would go in and they would buy huge blocks of these growth companies and really, really move markets. And when news got out that my dad was moving into one particular company, these companies would soar. And conversely, when he news got out that he might be selling, these stocks would plummet. So he really moved markets and he shook up this institutional conservative mindset about investing just in kind of utility companies and more stable, more established businesses. And he did that at Fidelity Capital Fund first. So Edward Johnson Sr. gave my father when he”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he had kind of crafted his own image. It was a bit of a bad boy within the world of fund management because you have to understand back then, you know, the institutions, the pension funds, the trust departments of banks were super, super conservative. I mean, their kind of focus was on electric utility companies, gas companies, railroads, very, very stable kinds of businesses. And here my father comes in and he focuses almost entirely on growth companies and the way he trades them was unique. So there's a guy by, one of his close friends was John Rosenwald. John Rosenwald was vice chair of Barr Stearns. He's currently vice chair of JP Morgan. I'm still in touch with.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's hard to think about real celebrity fund managers today to the same degree. I mean, he had apparently articles, I think it was in the cover of Business Week. He was in Newsweek. The press spoke about him as this kind of celebrity figure. He had a ponytail, by the way.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So she was very good with people. And that lesson about why be a square table when you can be around one, the lessons of Dale Carnegie in how to win friends and influence people. I think there are all very good lessons to appropriate and apply it in one's own life. So she was totally influential to me in how I think about dealing with interacting with building relationships with people.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She said, In life, why be a square table when you can be around one? She was talking about, I think, what, I mean, she intuitively knew Dale Carnegie, right? She knew how to deal. With people. She knew that it didn't make sense to be abrasive. And that kind of mentality, that understanding of how to deal with people actually helped her get. Exit visa. So just a quick example when she was being interrogated. I mentioned earlier that she was being interrogated for like three hours a day for about a year from what I understand. One day one of the guys in the room apparently said, you know, there are rumors about the Chinese children not having access to food. What do you think about that? And so she pulls out photos of her plump grandchildren and she says, look at my children. Do they look skinny to you? And apparently they shut up.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, she was a great cook. And I must have been maybe like 10 or 10 years old or something like that, maybe even younger. And I'm sitting around her. She lived in a very modest apartment, by the way. Like, she could have had any home she wanted. My father had already made plenty of money by the time she was living in Scarsdale. But she chose to stay in her modest apartment in Scarsdale as actually part of the projects. They weren't like the worst apartments in the world, but they were part of the projects I was there many, many times. So I'm sitting at her little dining table. And it's a square one. And she was making some of my favorite dishes. And she looked at me and she said, you know, look at this table. I should have bought a round table.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The most valuable part of the land is the topsoil. So she didn't put up a fight with the authorities. She said she'll do as she's asked. But what she also did was that the night before they were going to confiscate the property, she hired a bunch of guys to strip all the soil off, the topsoil, and sell it so she could recoup some of her investment. And this nobody knows, but apparently she took that money. She bought jewelry, which she eventually put in her hair. When she left from China and eventually got her exit visa to go to Hong Kong. So she was able to take the money, the money with her. Hong Kong”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can you believe how different the times were then? But she fought to go to boarding school. How did she do that? She locked herself in her room and refused to eat until she was given the okay. So this kind of feisty, and she got her way and she wound up going to the same school that Madame Shankai-shek went to, a very prestigious school in China. But that kind of feisty mentality stayed with her. So to the top soil story, so the Chinese authorities knock on the door one night. They say, you know, you have to vacate the property that she had been saving up to buy for years.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, totally. One quick story before we talk about the topsoil story. And I actually just learned about it today. I must have read it before, but as I was preparing for our talk, I was reading this speech that I had mentioned that my grandmother gave. And I came across a little section about how when she was just a child, you know, she really wanted to go to boarding school because the boarding schools were the best schools. in Shanghai around Shanghai at the time. But her parents didn't want her to go. And her grandmother said to her that if you're too educated, you'll never find a man.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of capital and compounding and the importance of not having to go back to go in life and with not just your life, but with money. But this idea of capital preservation was instilled in me at a very, very early age and certainly through these stories that my father told me about his life growing up and the difficulties that him and his mother and father faced.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me to live the kind of life that I'm living today where I wasn't uprooted in my childhood. I wasn't forced to move from home to home. I didn't have to worry about a bomb dropping or what was going to happen. I wasn't cut off from the news. I wasn't cut off from my friends. So I'm totally grateful for everything that they've done for me. And I understand like how hard it was for them to create that initial kind of plot of capital that allowed the whole family to kind of do what it's done. And this idea of like capital preservation, it was instilled in me very early. Like how important it is to preserve capital. And we can talk a lot about preservation.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, a couple things on that. So important to remember, my father was born in 1929, and this was all happening when he was roughly 10 years old, right? So he was old enough to remember that if you're born in tumultuous times and you're too young, you're not going to remember certain things. He was old enough to remember that. And consequently, he was old enough to talk to me when I was a teenager about his life in China. Of course, growing up in a much more privileged, stable environment, even today, like I'm not able to fully grasp what he spoke about. But I think I have enough knowledge to understand that my grandfather, my grandmother, my father, they've made extreme sacrifices to a lot of”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Grandmother and my grandfather were separated for multiple periods of like 10 years each. She was separated from her children once the kids made it over to America. So it's a long, long, long history of separation, of being interrogated by Chinese authorities. She had this kind of connection with America because her husband, Gerald Tsai, not my follower, but my father's father, Gerald Zai, worked for Ford Motor Company. So there was already this connection to an American company. Then my father went over to the States. So Grandma Ruth was then interrogated for three hours a day for over a year by the communist authorities. There's a whole ordeal. And needless to say, like when everybody was eventually reunited, it was just a joyous joy. Occasion, and that was years, years later.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And one night there was a knock on the door, and the communist authorities, communist authorities said, you have like a night to vacate, a day to vacate the property. We're confiscating your land. So she was stripped of her possessions after she had accumulated money and she had to kind of start from scratch. So they went through a lot.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there was the Dutch settlement, the Portuguese settlement, the Italian settlement, the British settlement. And in order to keep my father and his sister in school, they had to move around from different settlements. So it's hard for us, I think, to understand that. But from what I've read in this speech was that it was incredibly humiliating. Be forced to move around within your own country. Then, you know, after she had accumulated some money, she bought a farm in China, not far from Shanghai. I believe in Such Chou.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody knows this, but she forged my father's passport. So he was born in 1929. And somehow she made the nine look like an eight, got him out of the country one year early. But it wasn't an easy process. And she needed money as well to help pay for the tuition. So she started trading real estate because you didn't need a license at the time apparently to Trade real estate. And she was fairly well connected from what I understand. So she started in that area. She made some money, traded real estate, eventually became a trader of stocks, bonds, and commodities on the Shanghai stock exchange. She was a pioneer in the sense because she was the first woman to trade on the floor of the Shanghai stock exchange. This was all happening when various international concessions in China were being formed.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's a long history. It was very fortunate for my grandmother. Her name was Ruth. She gave a speech to her church when she finally made it over to America. She lived in Scarsdale, New York. And the title of her speech was Reminces of Her Time in Hong Kong, China, and the United States. Without that speech, I would not have known as much as I know today. What I know is, as you alluded to, my grandmother and my grandfather went through a lot to get my father to America, his sister to America. And I'm truly grateful for all the sacrifices that they made. To give you a couple of examples, it was, I guess, in the late 1930s. When Japanese troops took over northern China, my grandmother really wanted to get my father out of the country and it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy to get an exit visa.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“William, it is so wonderful to see you. We've had wonderful, memorable, open conversations in the past, and it's just a privilege for me to be here with you. I'm so grateful for this time with you, William. Nice to see you.”
2024-05-26 · We Study Billionaires · RWH045: Real Success w/ Christopher Tsai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT