after a nearly twoyear trade that accumulated losses in the nine figures coltrane asset management’s mandeep manku can now revel in the light of being right wait what happened in 2020 manku had an idea with so many companies trading at more than ten times their revenues manku decided to move coltrane asset’s portfolio from snapping up cheap european stocks to aggressively shorting the us tech sector it didn’t work out at first in 2020 a spike in the shares of businesses involved in technology and the internet helped push us indices to alltime highs as of december 16 2020 gains in just three companies apple inc aapl amazoncom inc amzn and microsoft corporation msft accounted for more than half of the sp 500s 166 total return the tech surge that year nearly destroyed the firms more than 1 billion of managed capital despite gaining 19 one year later in 2021 the 2020 tech short took the fund from over 1 billion to under 200 million by january 2022 licking the wounds of 56 losses manku was adding to his shorts still believing in his original plan of action that tech and growth stocks were in for a rough year they are having a rough year to say the least enter the long list of macroeconomic headwinds that popped the 2022 tech bubble akin to the busting of the 19952001 dotcom bubble while the war in ukraine prolonged covid19 lockdowns in china clogged supply chains extremely high inflation slowing economic development and a long list of other issues are bad news for the average investor manku gained from each of the drawdowns to the tune of 223 by june one of the largest percentage profits this year for a hedge fund the total gain is several hundred million dollars according to people familiar with the fund also read former berkshire executive and possible warren buffett successor walks away from it all tracy britt cools story investors of the fund said manku was short pandemic favorites like netflix inc nflx peloton interactive inc pton meta platforms inc meta videogame platform roblox corp rblx and electrictruck maker rivian automotive inc rivn he was also short carvana co cvna that stock is down 9061 yeartodate one investor said this short alone contributed to 9 of overall gains “in our industry lots of people who ended up right weren’t able to be there when they were right because they were closed out or clients took their money away” said stuart roden an early coltrane investor and believer of manku coltrane has locked in many of the gains from the shorts and is overall long the market again but continues to hold some short positions in growth stocks manku is revisiting his original plan of action to deliver value to shareholders snapping up cheap european stocks manku has told others coltrane’s returns this year reflect a moment in time and that longterm performance is what matters “success is about having a consistent approach that’s true to your world view staying grounded and calm” manku said “we are still very much at the beginning of our journey but have we hope learned a few valuable lessons already” coltrane asset management has gained an average of 19 per year