David Tepper is a great investor. Those skills may be hurting him in the NFL. | Opinion

There’s no denying that David Tepper is one of the great investors of his generation. But is that unique skill set actually problematic when applied as an NFL owner?

In business school we are taught the key to investing is asset allocation and diversification, but many of the greats such a Warren Buffett, Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Druckenmiller and Tepper have achieved their coveted track record by doing just the opposite- making very concentrated bets in areas they have a lot of conviction.

Druckenmiller, who averaged 30% annual returns for 30 years without a down year, has described his process as putting all his eggs in one basket and watching the basket very closely. Buffet has said that diversification is only required when investors don’t know what they are doing.

Tepper is widely seen among his investor peers as having the best trade in market history. When everyone was hiding under their desk during the great financial crisis, Tepper was aggressively loading the boat with beaten down bank preferred stocks. In 2009, his fund, Appaloosa, was up 132% for a $7 billion profit.

Fast-forward to Tepper’s NFL ownership: To get quarterback Bryce Young, the Panthers traded D.J. Moore, a 2023 first and second round draft pick, a 2024 first round draft pick, and 2025 second-round draft pick. While the Panthers and Tepper might be about to claw their way out of this situation, it very well could go down as the worst trade in NFL history — a great example of how trading securities are far different then building a cohesive team of young athletes with all different sorts of personalities.

In the investing world, if you’re going to make concentrated bets you better maintain a very open mind and a lot of flexibility. Another common trait among most of the great traders is the ability to remove ego and admit mistakes quickly for small losses. It’s not about being right or wrong, it’s how much money you make when you are right and how much money you lose when you’re wrong.

I’m sure this is very frustrating for Tepper as this is not a transferable strategy in the NFL when you’re dealing with hefty long-term contracts and salary caps. It’s like watching your investments hemorrhage money and there’s nothing you can do about it, until finally you make a knee-jerk reaction because you don’t know what else to do.

I’m not saying that Coach Frank Reich should have not been fired, nor that Tepper is a bad NFL owner, but any good trader knows when they are hot or cold. And when they are cold, they don’t make concentrated bets. They grind it out until they catch their stride again.

Unfortunately, the Carolina Panthers will have to grind this out over the next couple of seasons, but something tells me that Tepper will learn from this mistake and ultimately be a very good owner. While the future looks bleak, it rarely pays to bet against a good money manager when they are down on their luck.

Gray Howard is a longtime wealth manager in Charlotte .