Dan Chong
Provided by: Fred Alger Management
Daniel Chan, CEO and chief investment officer of investment firm Fred Alger Management, happened to survive the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
On that morning a quarter-century ago, the then-technology analyst started his day at the InterContinental Hotel in midtown Manhattan, looking for answers to why major stocks were underperforming. The company’s chief executive officer was scheduled to give a presentation that day.
Chung said, “I was going to be late, so I went to the meeting right away.” “The meeting starts. The CEO walks out. It’s early days, but someone comes in, I think it’s the hotel or AV staff, and hands them a note.”
“He looked at it and said, ‘I don’t know if I can continue,'” Chong added. “There’s a plane or something coming to the World Trade Center.”
Algiers’ office was on the 93rd floor of One World Trade Center’s North Tower, where the first building was bombed at 8:46 a.m.
Those gathered in Midtown did not immediately understand what had happened. Everyone’s first instinct was that it was an accident. Minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., the room fell silent as a second plane hit the South Tower. Meetings were canceled, people found themselves without cell phone service, and began lining up to use the landline phones outside the conference room.
Phone calls to his office in downtown Lower Manhattan went unanswered.
When Chong left the hotel on 42nd Street, his car was parked. People stood motionless, staring down Lexington Street. There, a cloud of smoke and debris covered the view of Manhattan, and the tower caught fire and then collapsed. Chong isn’t sure how long he stood there before realizing he had to move uptown.
After contacting several other colleagues in Algiers, he spent the rest of the day with his team spread across the city’s hospitals, carrying photos of his colleagues. Some went to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village. Others go to Bellevue. Everywhere, people looked for survivors and waited anxiously for ambulances to begin arriving.
“At noon or later, thousands of people gathered outside the hospital, holding signs and waiting,” Chong said. “I remember expecting to see an ambulance by the evening. In fact, I don’t remember seeing a single ambulance that day.”
Mr. Chong eventually returned to his wife and child’s home in Brooklyn well after midnight.
He later learned that 35 of his colleagues, including then-CEO David Alger, had been killed in the attack on the North Tower.
top survivor
Chong was appointed Algiers’ chief investment officer shortly after the tragedy. He was the oldest survivor, and founder Fred Alger (Chung’s father-in-law) came out of retirement and tasked him with rebuilding the company.
Chong was able to tap into the company’s large capital account to help during the market crisis. And they needed to act quickly to ease the fears of customers worried about the future of their assets and the company.
Preparations made by Algiers Chief Technology Officer Michael Howell, who passed away on September 11th, allowed Algiers to resume operations on September 13th. Mr. Howell had assured him that a backup recovery center in Morristown, New Jersey, would be able to support the company’s operations. The center had a complete trading desk that replicated what Alger had in the trade center, right down to the seating order of the portfolio managers.
“It was above the highest standards,” Chong said. “Platinum Standard”. Their customer records were intact. So were proprietary trading and other models.
Within days, Alger was able to hold a meeting to update customers, consultants, and the stock exchange on the company’s status.
Flowers are left at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, located on the land where the Twin Towers stood before they were destroyed in the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City.
Spencer Pratt | Getty Images
In the 25 years since, Chong has done more than rebuild Algiers. Known for being one of the best-performing mutual funds during the 1990s tech boom, Algiers’ assets have grown to more than $47 billion, according to the company. Flagship Algiers Spectra Fund (Specs) currently has total assets of $4.5 billion.
Over the past few years, Chong’s confidence in artificial intelligence trading has helped the fund manager perform even better. SPECX was in the top 4% of funds in its category last year and in the top 2% in 2024. The fund also ranks in the top quartile of its category on a three-, five- and 10-year basis, according to Morningstar.
Return of graduates
Chong, 64, also succeeded by avoiding the advice of consultants in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks.
Many encouraged the Harvard Law graduate, who previously clerked for the Supreme Court, to poach star portfolio managers from other companies. But the analyst-turned-executive decided that honoring the company’s legacy and the lives lost on September 11 meant preserving Algiers’ philosophy and culture. Rather than assembling a solid team made up of members with different personalities, Chung sought graduates who had studied and succeeded at Algiers. He wanted to keep the spirit of Algiers alive.
“I became dedicated to the idea of rebuilding Algiers and not just rebuilding Algiers and staying in business,” Chong said. “We were awesome.”
Many alumni heard this call and felt it was their duty to help. They include Teresa McRoberts, who ran health care, and David Hyun, who left his job at the Oppenheimer Fund. Jill Greenwald, a small-cap portfolio manager, approached Chung at Ginger Risco’s memorial service. Ginger Risco was a former secretary at Alger & Co. and attended night school at Columbia University before asking Fred Alger for an analyst position. Risco also died on the 93rd floor.
“Jill came to me and said, ‘I heard that you’re asking alumni from Algiers to come back,'” Chong said. “I said yes and she was like, ‘When should I start?'”
“Positive dynamic change”
Today, Algiers is as bullish on technology as it was when it was founded in 1964.
Fred Alger was known for his growth-oriented investing style, which was in direct contrast to value investors like Warren Buffett. “You might go bankrupt if you buy cheap stocks,” Mr. Alger once joked. Instead, Fred looked up to Gerald Tsai, the famed Fidelity fund manager who pioneered picking stocks based on accelerating earnings growth. By the 1990s, Mr. Alger was praised by Wall Street for his track record of finding companies in high-growth sectors, including his 1977 acquisition of Intel. Apple in 1984. By 2000, Barron’s named Fred Alger to its All-Century Team of Legendary Investors.
Investing in “positive dynamic change” remains a core tenet of Alger’s investment philosophy, which has led the company to be an early investor in the artificial intelligence industry. Chung said naysayers who worry about future data center oversupply and claim the group’s price hikes amount to a bubble are overlooking the fact that there is currently a shortage of computing power.
today, Nvidia The company is the top holding in Spectra funds, accounting for 14% of assets as of June, according to Morningstar. The dominant AI chipmaker is up 17% this year, but that’s disappointing only when compared to Nvidia’s impressive earnings growth and impressive profits from late 2022 onwards. Chung expects NVIDIA to once again claim a higher price-to-earnings ratio than the market.
cloud strike This is another high-conviction bet that Chung believes will maintain “very high growth rates” for several years, given the importance of cybersecurity with the advent of AI. chip manufacturer western digital and micron You will still benefit from memory needs. and nevius groupSpectra’s top 10 holdings are neocloud companies that Chung recognized early on as winners in the space. This year, it’s nearly tripled.
Chung, who graduated from Stanford University, said AI-driven growth is “probably close to a full decade, and we’re still in the early stages.” The move toward AI is “still in its infancy for me. I think this is closer to 1995 than, say, 1999.”
“There are many good things in this world.”
Algiers has finally emerged from the darkest days of 9/11 bigger than ever before. The tragedy prompted the company to focus on philanthropy, and this year it held a fundraising golf tournament in May.
In honor of the 35 colleagues who died on 9/11, the firm launched the Algiers 35 ETF, comprised of 35 of the firm’s most principled investment ideas. The company is donating a portion of its management fees from the fund to charity in memory of David Alger and his colleagues. Chong said even Algiers’ most junior analysts present him with ideas for ETFs that are rated gold by Morningstar.
This economic recovery has also shaped Chong’s hopeful view of the future, even at a time shaped by social polarization, fears about artificial intelligence, and new American wars in the Middle East. Chong is optimistic that the country will be able to move forward.
“Look at how well New York did. In fact, look at how well America did. And look at how Alger has rebounded,” Chong said. “I think it’s a reminder, a little bit of a quote from The Hobbit from The Lord of the Rings. It’s a reminder that there’s a lot of good in this world.”
“There’s a lot of good in the people, in our organization, and certainly in this city and this country,” Chong continued. “And because of that, even though there’s a lot of noise and uncertainty and worry, because it has endured and continues, we have been able to recover. We are here today.”
