“I’m not a bonus and salary guy”

Back in July, SoftBank set up a new fund to invest in public equities, and it’s doing very well. So far, they have purchased $4B of call options on tech stocks, and they are up ~100% on their investment. 😲

The WSJ and FT reported that SoftBank’s investments actually drove the market rally this summer because Softbank was buying so many shares, the banks on the other side of their trades had to buy more shares to hedge themselves, and that cycle of buying drove the price of stocks up.

But apparently, SoftBank’s investors don’t like this strategy - their stock dropped ~10% after the news came out. Shouldn’t be a surprise though. At last month’s investor meeting, someone asked Masayoshi Son about his personal investment in the fund, and his answer was he wanted to take more risk because he’s “not a bonus and salary guy.”

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