Billionaire Mark Cuban Is Massively Short The Yen; “in early December, I went and took every penny of debt that I had – with the Mavericks, and personal debt, and everything – and converted it to a yen loan at mid 80s”

April 26, 2013 Leave a comment

Mark Cuban Is Massively Short The Yen

Matthew Boesler | Apr. 25, 2013, 4:39 PM | 10,455 | 12

Entrepreneur Mark Cuban made an interesting admission today on CNBC: he’s massively short the yen. The conversation started with a discussion on tech stocks, but then Cuban said: Honestly, I don’t jump into a lot of public technology stocks other than to have fun and trade every now and then. Where I have made my biggest trades have been in currencies, because there is a lot more transparency, and a lot more information available, than there are with stocks. It’s just a more efficient market, in my mind. CNBC anchor Scott Wapner then asked Cuban, “Now that you went there, I’ve got to ask you: what are you trading now? Are you short the yen, like everybody else?”

Cuban replied: Yeah. Actually, in early December, I went and took every penny of debt that I had – with the Mavericks, and personal debt, and everything – and converted it to a yen loan, when I think [the yen] was in the mid 80s [against the dollar]. So, I’ve been really happy with it. When the value of the currency decreases, it reduces the burden of the debt in real terms. The yen has decreased from “the mid 80s” against the dollar (when Cuban says he converted the loans) to around 100 against the dollar today, so Cuban has done pretty well on his yen trade so far.

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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