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1989: Leader of Tianamen Square protests
1996: Graduated from Columbia w/ 3 degrees (BA economics, MBA, and JD) at the same time (1st student in history to do so) & $1M
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bclxecdcKgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bclxecdcKgk)
Mohnish Pabrai discusses how Li Liu took his college student loans float and invested it into the stock market and had $1M by the time he graduated. It’s unclear how many years that took, but from Google, I see his background is that in 1989, he was a Tianamen Square protest leader. He was a student protester, so that means he already had some academic training prior to going to Columbia.
If we assume the longest time-frame possible for his Columbia education, it would be 1989 Fall semester entrance and 1996 Spring semester graduation. That’d be 7 years (which I doubt is how long he took, given the genius level intelligence ascribed to him).
Mohnish says Li Liu got a scholarship from Columbia for tuition, but then other funding (student loans?...or Hong Kong financial backers?) for rent, books, and living expenses. He said at the beginning of each semester Li would get several months worth of this upfront (essentially a float) and take that money and invest it before it was due. Per Google, Columbia tuition, room, and board was about $25,000. Mohnish corroborates this and says most likely Li would have gotten about $10,000 upfront every 3 or 4 months or something like that. …By the time of graduation, Li had $1M from investing (after about 3-4 years, according to Pabrai). Mohnish seems to think his Columbia studies took 3-4 years, while I gave it a max of 7 years.
If we start with $20,000 and turn into into $1M in 4 or 7 years, the CAGRs needed would be:
4 Years: 165% CAGR
7 Years: 75% CAGR
If doing this with long-only positions, it seems ridiculously hard. What methods do you think Li Liu used and do you think college student nowadays could replicate his success (assuming not some YOLO investment into BTC) with fundamental investing?