Bill Ackman’s three best investments

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman said their best investments challenged conventional wisdom and were challenged with extreme scepticism when they were made.

Ackman’s journey into investing began in his early years when he interned at a real estate development company in his hometown of Chappaqua, New York.

He later attended Harvard Business School. After graduating, Ackman founded his own hedge fund, Gotham Partners, which focused on value investing and activism.

In 2004, Ackman launched Pershing Square Capital Management, where he continued using his unique investing approach to build a highly concentrated portfolio of carefully selected stocks.

Ackman is highly respected in investment circles, with his Pershing Square Holdings hedge fund managing to compound annually at a rate of 16.1% for nearly two decades.

He is known for his bold investment strategies and ability to identify undervalued companies with strong growth potential.

In a recent post, Ackman said the greatest opportunities for discovery, innovation, understanding, and profits often exist in unexplored paths.

He said Pershing Square Capital Management’s best investments have been.

• In the stock of a real estate company going bankrupt.
• From betting that a triple-A rated company was insolvent.
• Betting that a virus in China would cause a global economic shutdown.

“Each of these investments was met with extreme scepticism at the time they were made,” Ackman said.

He said that in these three investments, they were the naive ones when they pumped money into these opportunities.

“We were not bankruptcy investors, experts in bond insurers or credit default swaps, nor did we know anything about viruses or pandemics,” he said.

It was challenging conventional wisdom that helped Ackman to produce exceptional returns for his investors.