Hedge fund loses $17 billion in tech selloff in one of history’s biggest dollar declines

Tiger Global’s hedge fund has reportedly lost $17 billion during this year’s major tech selloff, according to the Financial Times—one of history’s biggest dollar declines for a hedge fund.

Citing estimates from LCH Investments, the FT reported that in just four months, around two-thirds of the gains the hedge fund has seen since its 2001 launch have been wiped out.

Tiger Global, which runs a private equity business alongside its hedge fund, currently manages around $80 billion of assets, according to data from Bloomberg.

Tech selloff

A spokesperson for Tiger Global was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Fortune.

However, a source told the FT that those who had invested money in Tiger’s fund when it launched saw the value of their investments increase 20-fold.

Those gains have reportedly been thanks in part to bets the fund’s manager made on tech stocks.

Tiger Global was founded by Chase Coleman, named last year by LCH as the 14th most successful hedge fund manager of all time, according to the FT.

But against the backdrop of a sustained selloff in global equity markets, with the tech sector in particular seeing a major decline, Tiger’s hedge fund lost 43.7% in the first four months of the year, according to the FT.  

Coleman—whose biggest asset is his stake in Tiger Global, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index—has seen his personal net worth fall from around $11 billion at the beginning of this year to $8.9 billion as of Monday, according to Bloomberg.

Tough 2022

Wall Street’s selloff has intensified in recent days, with major indexes all seeing consistent declines.

So far this year, the S&P 500 is down by around 16% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has declined by around 11%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has shed almost 27%.

U.S. tech giants have suffered major share price declines since the start of the year, and since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by the steepest increase since 2000 last week, those losses have deepened.

After the Fed’s rate hike on Wednesday, Apple—the world’s most valuable company—saw its market capitalization fall by more than $220 billion, while e-commerce giant Amazon’s market cap has declined by around $174 billion.

Big Tech players Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla have also seen tens of billions wiped off market caps in the wake of the interest rate increase.

According to CNBC, the United States’ biggest tech companies have seen their market caps decline by a collective total of more than $1 trillion during the past three trading sessions.