Hedge Hunters: After the Credit Crisis, How Hedge Fund Masters Survived, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6

Lee Ainslie

A Stock Picker, Pure and Hardly Simple

LEE AINSLIE LOOKS younger than forty-three. He's got boyish good looks and the hint of a Southern drawl from a childhood spent in Virginia, where his father was an English teacher, and later headmaster, at two private schools. The day I talked with Ainslie, he was dressed up—at least by hedge fund manager standards—wearing a gray pinstripe suit, a blue button-down shirt, and a silk tie. His office, outfitted with a table and chairs for frequent small meetings, overlooks the seven-member trading desk and a large television screen tuned to CNBC at the far end.

Ainslie, who has been constructing stock portfolios since he was a teen, runs Maverick Capital, one of the largest pure stock ...