Tepper + balls = $7 billion and Guy of the Year

December 23, 2009

According to the Urban Dictionary, a “Tepper” is a set of male genitalia that has been gelded, or had the balls removed.

Presumably because he was born a Tepper, New Jersey-based hedge fund manager David Tepper, who I assume does not have a Tepper, keeps a pair of brass balls on his desk, a gift from former employees. Balls as in human testicles – in other words, Monologues Balls.

Tepper rubs his balls, or at least the brass ones, for luck during the trading day. The result of his trading: as reported in a front-page story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Tepper’s fund, Appaloosa Management has made about $7 bill this year, $2.5 billion of which been earned personally by Mr. Tepper.

David Tepper

Not surprisingly, Tepper the guy is known for his ballsy bets. One of his clients, Alan Shealy, was quoted in the Journal, “Investing with David is like flying, with hours of boredom followed by bouts of sheer terror… you have to have a cast iron stomach.” Or, better yet, balls, brass or otherwise. According to the Journal, Tepper often places more than half his portfolio in a single trade idea, and his biggest scores have come from buying large chunks of out-of-favor investments. This year, he bought bank stocks when investors were worried about nationalization. He bought shares of B of A at less than 3, and he bought Citigroup at an average of less than a buck a share. Bank of America closed today above 15, and Citicorp closed at $3.34. Had you put 50 grand evenly divided into those two stocks as Tepper did, you would have turned it into around $200,000 in a matter of months. Think about all the sex you could have had with that money!

In my Thanksgiving post, Two reasons to give thanks, I gave thanks for our balls. No one is thanking his balls more than David Tepper, who, without them, would, after all, be just another Tepper.

This was not Tepper’s first big score. He’s already made enough investing that he owns a chunk of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and he gave $55 million to the business school at Carnegie-Mellon University, his alma mater, which is now named after him.

But 2009 was a particularly good year, which is the main reason Guyinism has named hedge fund manager David Tepper as The Balls Monologues’ Guy of the Year for 2009.

Plus he looks the part.

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