Jean-Francois Tardif Retiring From Sprott

[Parsad]

Star manager, Jean-Francois Tardif, will be retiring from Sprott Asset Management at the obscenely old age (which I turn in July) of 40!  Tough for Sprott, but great for Tardif.  Cheers!

 

http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090526.wtardif0526/GIStory/

[oec2000]

Intriguing - is there more to it than meets the eye? It would be a shame if he were truly retiring because he is really good and will be a loss to the investment community. It had struck me as odd at the time of the Sprott IPO that JF was not appointed to the board when Peter Hodson and Allen Jacobs, who joined Sprott later, were.

 

I had actually asked Eric Sprott at their AGM earlier this month whether there were any potential issues with managers leaving Sprott (but I was thinking more of their recent hires, Allen Jacobs and Charles Oliver who have not had too much success in ramping up their fund sizes partly because of performance issues). He gave an answer which I thought was kind of evasive initially but he did end up saying that it was not something that kept him awake at night.

 

Digressing a bit, does anyone here know what happened to Jeff Vinik (of Fidelity Magellan fame, or should I say, infamy) who decided to (really) retire after a few highly successful years of running the Vinik Fund (after being ousted from Fidelity) during which he returned something like 35-40% p.a.?

[Guest kawikaho]

Geez, lucky bastard.  I wonder how significant he was to the performance of Sprott.

[Guest Broxburnboy]

JF is a great mutual fund manager. His Sprott Opportunities fund has managed to preserve its unit value over the last 18 months because JF correctly predicted this bear phase, and hedged accordingly. In these times, it takes a lot of talent to correctly analyze trends and hedge accordingly. When the tide went out, Jf was revealed fully clothed.

I don't know why he is retiring at such a young age, but the optics point towards and amicable parting.

Could it be that he wants to enjoy life and leave the management of other people's money to someone else?

 

 

JF's last interview on BNN:

 

http://watch.bnn.ca/market-call/may-2009/market-call-may-21-2009/#clip174626

[NumquamPerdo]

JF would have made an obscene amount of money over the past couple of years and I think he's starting a family.  Good for him for tapping out after a great streak - I think a lot of people wish they had done that themselves (*coughs* Bill Miller).