• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Egg companies made $1.22 billion in profit off a $6 carton — now they’re buying their way out of a price-fixing case with 53 million donated eggs

2

Meet the Zillennials: The luckiest micro-generation in the workforce, born between 1993 and 1998

3

Economists have found an answer to slowing cognitive decline: Avoid retiring early, study finds

1

Egg companies made $1.22 billion in profit off a $6 carton — now they’re buying their way out of a price-fixing case with 53 million donated eggs

2

Meet the Zillennials: The luckiest micro-generation in the workforce, born between 1993 and 1998

3

Economists have found an answer to slowing cognitive decline: Avoid retiring early, study finds

The 4 hedge funders losing big in the Japan rout

By
Stephen Gandel
Stephen Gandel
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Stephen Gandel
Stephen Gandel
Down Arrow Button Icon
May 23, 2013, 5:35 PM ET
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

FORTUNE — The “Abe Trade” just hit a major bump.

Toward the end of last year, a number of large hedge funds began piling into Japan. Driving the bet was the country’s new prime minister Shinzo Abe, who said he favored flooding Japan’s markets with cash from its central bank in order to finally pull its economy out of its perpetual slump. And hedge funds, for all their griping about Ben Bernanke for doing essentially the same thing — on a relatively smaller scale, no less — fell in love with Abenomics.

The most popular trades appear to have been to bet against the yen and to buy up Japanese stocks. Both of those trades crapped out on Thursday. Japanese stocks plunged 7%. The yen was up 2% against the dollar. Thursday’s Japanese market rout appeared to be based on new fears about a slowdown in China and the prospect that the U.S. central bank would stop buying bonds to drive down interest rates.

MORE: Watch out: The mortgage securities market is at it again

This might not be the end of the “Abe Trade.” It’s hard to know how much money was lost in the Japan rout. Many of the hedge funds had made pretty good money on the trade in the past few months, so they may not be in the red on Japan even after the recent drop. But here are the fund managers who likely took the biggest hits:

1) Dan Loeb

Loeb has been the most recent hedge fund manager to proclaim his love for Japan. That means he is the most likely to have bought near the top. In early May, after dipping his toe in the water in the first quarter, Loeb said his $11.7 billion Third Point fund was making a broad bet on Japanese stocks. About a week later, Loeb’s fund disclosed it had amassed a significant stake in Sony (SNE) and was pushing for changes. But Loeb said he was buying not just on stimulus from Japan’s central bank, but also because of structural changes, such as reforms that will alter wages and bring more women into the workforce, that he predicts will make the economy more efficient.

2) Paul Tudor Jones

Jones was one of the first hedge fund mangers to question Ben Bernanke’s plan to boost the economy by buying bonds and driving down interest rates. These days all of the so-called smart money are doing it. But, apparently, what’s “perverse” for Peoria, is A-OK for Osaka. Jones’s Tudor Investments saw its flagship fund rise 9% in the last two months of 2012 and first month of this year largely on a bet against the yen. But he has also been going long on Japanese stocks as well. In the first quarter of this year, Jones’s fund invested $10.8 million in the iShares MSCI Japanese index (EWJ), an ETF that tracks the Japanese stock market.

3) Stan Druckenmiller

In early May, Druckenmiller, who for 12 years led Soros’s Quantum fund, said he thought Japan was in the early stages of a bull market. He likes Japan because its central bank was trying “QE times 3.” He said the central bank’s bond-buying efforts would work better in Japan than in the U.S. because deflation is a real threat in Japan. He thinks the Federal Reserve will have to abandon QE sooner than people think as the economy recovers, causing a U.S. stock market crash.

4) Louis Bacon

Bacon’s Moore Capital has struggled lately, forcing it to give back some his investors’ money. The one big trade that has paid off is Japan. Bacon has been reportedly betting against the yen since last November. As of the end of the first quarter, Moore had investments in Japanese finance companies Mitsubishi and Sumitomo Mitsui, though Japan’s stocks didn’t appear to make up a big portion of its stock portfolio.

And one winner: Kyle Bass

Bass, who became famous for betting against the housing market, has been saying for a while that his current big short is Japan, which he calls a “Ponzi on top of a Ponzi” and thinks could be on the verge of its own financial crisis. Japan has way to much debt. Japanese savers, which have largely supported their government’s borrowing, are tapped out. Bass recently went so far as to commission a poll to prove it. It asked just over 1,000 Japanese investors whether they would be willing to buy more of their country’s bonds if Japan entered a crisis. The result: 83% said they would “run, not walk” away from the Japanese bond market. Still, Bass has been betting against Japan, and has been wrong for a while — until recently. And Bass is serial worrier. He has also bet against Greece and other countries in Europe. And he owns a survival ranch on thousands of acres in the middle of nowhere in Texas.

MORE: Solar subsidies don’t merit costly trade war with China

But perhaps the best call on Japanese stocks came from the relatively unknown Sensato Capital Management, which manages $1.3 billion and is based in San Francisco. The firm’s Asia fund, which was up 7% in April alone, has bet heavily on Japanese stocks this year. But on Monday, the firm’s co-founders Ernest Chow and Jonathan Howe sent a letter to investors saying they now believed the Japanese stock market was overvalued, and it was time to sell. Well played.

About the Author
By Stephen Gandel
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in

‘Devin-kun’: Japan embraces agents as legacy code and a shrinking workforce create a perfect market for an AI software engineer 
AsiaAI agents
‘Devin-kun’: Japan embraces agents as legacy code and a shrinking workforce create a perfect market for an AI software engineer 
By Nicholas GordonJuly 3, 2026
1 hour ago
‘It’s just his AI and my AI going back and forth’: The workplace phenomenon that’s undermining human relationships
Future of WorkWorkforce
‘It’s just his AI and my AI going back and forth’: The workplace phenomenon that’s undermining human relationships
By Jacqueline MunisJuly 3, 2026
7 hours ago
Chad Hurley and Steven Chen wearing suits
SuccessWealth
YouTube’s founders split over $650 million when they sold to Google in 2006—had they held out, they could have taken a slice of $550 billion
By Preston ForeJuly 3, 2026
7 hours ago
Photo: Paris, france
Environmentclimate change
Brutal heatwave in France is killing 2,000 people per week, undertakers are overwhelmed, and health agency says there’s worse to come
By John Leicester and The Associated PressJuly 3, 2026
7 hours ago
ds
CommentarySoftware
I argued with the father of open source for 2 years. Now the AI fight is the same — only bigger
By David SiegelJuly 3, 2026
10 hours ago
ashok
Commentary250 Years of Innovation
The greatest startup in history: What we can learn from America’s founders at today’s AI frontier
By Ashok N. SrivastavaJuly 3, 2026
10 hours ago

Most Popular

Egg companies made $1.22 billion in profit off a $6 carton — now they’re buying their way out of a price-fixing case with 53 million donated eggs
Law
Egg companies made $1.22 billion in profit off a $6 carton — now they’re buying their way out of a price-fixing case with 53 million donated eggs
By Wyatte Grantham-Philips and The Associated PressJuly 2, 2026
1 day ago
Meet the Zillennials: The luckiest micro-generation in the workforce, born between 1993 and 1998
AI
Meet the Zillennials: The luckiest micro-generation in the workforce, born between 1993 and 1998
By Nick LichtenbergJuly 3, 2026
15 hours ago
Economists have found an answer to slowing cognitive decline: Avoid retiring early, study finds
Economy
Economists have found an answer to slowing cognitive decline: Avoid retiring early, study finds
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 2, 2026
1 day ago
On Wall Street, analysts increasingly don’t believe the U.S. government’s 'misleading' job numbers
Economy
On Wall Street, analysts increasingly don’t believe the U.S. government’s 'misleading' job numbers
By Jim EdwardsJuly 3, 2026
11 hours ago
Mark Zuckerberg feeds his cows macadamia nuts and beer to create the 'highest-quality beef in the world' on his $300 million estate in Hawaii
Success
Mark Zuckerberg feeds his cows macadamia nuts and beer to create the 'highest-quality beef in the world' on his $300 million estate in Hawaii
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 2, 2026
1 day ago
Current price of oil as of July 2, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of July 2, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 2, 2026
1 day ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.