Alfred Winslow Jones

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Alfred Winslow Jones : biography

9 September 1900 – 2 June 1989

Background

Jones was born in Melbourne, Australia, the son of Arthur Winslow Jones (an executive of General Electric) and his wife, Elizabeth Huntington. He moved to the United States with his family when he was 4. He graduated from Harvard University in 1923, and, after working as purser on a tramp steamer that sailed around the world, he joined the Foreign Service. In the early 1930s, he became vice consul at the U.S. embassy in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power. In 1932, for a couple of months he was married to Anna Luise Hauser, née Block (1896–1982), a daughter of the German painter Joseph Block and a descendant of German banker Joseph Mendelssohn.Marriage certificate, Amtsgericht Berlin-Tiergarten, Berlin/Germany, Nr. 38/1932 In 1936, he married Mary Carter, with whom he travelled through Spain during that country’s civil war, reporting on civilian relief for the Quakers. In 1941, he earned a doctorate in sociology at Columbia University.John Russell, NY Times 3 June 1989: Section 1, Page 11 He then completed his doctoral thesis, Life, Liberty and Property, a survey of attitudes toward property in Akron, Ohio.Alfred Winslow Jones, The University of Akron Press

Extended bibliography

  • Alfred Winslow Jones, , ‘The University of Akron Press
  • Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed’ (2000)
  • Scott J. Lederman, ‘Hedge Funds’, in Financial Product Fundamentals: A Guide for Lawyers, 11-3, 11-4, 11-5 (Clifford E. Kirsch ed., 2000);
  • Brown, Heidi and John H. Christy. "Growing Pains." Forbes 11 June 2001: 74–77.
  • Jones, Alfred Winslow. "Fashions in Forecasting." Fortune March 1949: 88–91, 180, 182, 184, 186.
  • Landau, Peter. "Alfred Winslow Jones: The Long and the Short of the Founding Father." Institutional Investor August 1968:
  • Landau, Peter. "The Hedge Funds: Wall Street’s New Way to Make Money." New York Magazine 21 October 1968: pp. 20–24.
  • Lindgren, Hugo. "Long-Short Story Short: The Creation Myth." New York Magazine 16 April 2007
  • Loomis, Carol J. "The Jones Nobody Keeps Up With." Fortune April 1966: 237, 240, 242, 247.
  • Loomis, Carol J. "Hard Times Come to Hedge Funds." Fortune June 1970: 100–103, 136–140.
  • "Missing ‘d.’" Grant’s Interest Rate Observer 9 October 1998: 1–2.
  • Scholl, Jaye. "Back to the Future." Barron’s 31 July 2000: 32.
  • Strachman, Daniel A. Getting Started in Hedge Funds. New York: Wiley, 2000.
  • Strauss, Lawrence C., "The Legacy." Barrons 31 May 2004

Category:1900 births Category:1989 deaths Category:American money managers Category:American hedge fund managers Category:Economists from Melbourne Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Columbia University alumni

Education

UBS Global Equity Research October 2000 NYU Stern School of Business

9 March 2001

In "Fashions," Jones assessed each approach, sometimes harshly and other times positively. For example, Jones commented on one analysis that "…the market trend succeeded itself 62.5 times out of a hundred and reversed itself 37.5 times. The probability of obtaining such a result in a penny tossing series is infinitesimal." Jones was looking for approaches that offered better than a ‘fair game.’ He noted that certain approaches require trending markets, others work in higher volatility environments, still others in improving credit markets. He was beginning to feel his way down a dimly lit path toward what today would be considered a factor-based approach to portfolio construction.Michael Litt, AEI POLICY SERIES 15 May 2006

Jones’s comments on Nicholas Molodovsky’s work showed he thought highly of it. In one passage on Molodovsky he said, "Well controlled experimental work of this nature is important and likely to become more accurate as the methods are further developed." He hinted at the approach of risk-weighting individual stocks, as well as quantifying how far a stock has diverged from its fundamental value.

The research gave him the idea to try his own hand at investing. Two months before the Fortune article went to press, Jones had established an investment partnership that would exploit this new style of investing. He raised a total of $100,000, $40,000 of which was his own. In its first year the partnership’s gain on its capital came to a very respectable 17.3 percent.Alan Rappeport, CFO Magazine 27 March 2007