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I grew up in a middle-class household in a small village in alpine Austria. Our family ran a small farm part-time - my father being a bus driver and my mother a homemaker. At the age of 16, I attended the extracurricular ‘Plus’ course on the stock market under a program for gifted students. This was my introduction to the world of public markets and investing. I had saved 70,000 shillings (approximately 5k EUR) by the age of 17, partly due to tutoring. During summer 2017, I had a holiday job at a local warehouse but also began investing in the stock market.

In those two months, I made more money from investing than from my job in the warehouse. I was hooked. Having invested 70,000 shillings in Qualcomm, I made 1500 percent return in two years, and as the headline in German suggests, I became a Schilling millionaire (75,000+ EUR) by the age of 19. I also advised my IT teacher on investments, and he earned more than 100,000 Shillings in profits on a small investment amount and paid me a success fee.

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Upon graduation, I joined MAN Group in Switzerland, one of the largest hedge funds in the world. There I had exposure to the best investment strategies and risk management practices in the world. The core principle of my investment strategy crystallized there, a focus on asymmetric risk reward. I look for investments which have limited downside, but at the same time, offer significant upside if I am correct in my investment thesis. The reality is that some of the best investors are only right 50% of the time but limit their losses and maximize their profits.

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When my department at MAN Group shut down during the 2009 global financial crisis, I quite spontaneously decided to move to Donetsk in Ukraine to learn Russian. Some months later I moved to Russia despite not really speaking the language or having a network of friends there. After further studies of the language, I became an analyst and then a portfolio manager for an American investment boutique in Moscow. During this time in Russia, I experienced a multiyear bear market from 2011 till 2016 where the Russian stock market index RTS lost over 75% of its value. Experiencing such a prolonged bear market had a significant impact on my investment philosophy and risk management. It was a very painful experience but taught me how to generate profits by short selling - which became my biggest strength as proven by our performance in March 2020 (or in fact this year).

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Money and wealth have a different meaning for everyone. In my case, it has a positive connotation as it has allowed me to do what I enjoy - traveling the world after my studies or setting up the investment business ARR Investment Partners in London for example.

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While I would not label the work we do at ARR Investment Partners as ‘specializing in short selling’, I do believe that many investors underestimate capital preservation, especially since we were previously in one of the longest bull markets ever. After all, if you lose 50%, you have to earn 100% in order to break even.