As 2021 came to a close, Clayton Larcombe was in trouble. A computer-game fund that the former stockbroker had hoped would take Australia by storm was going sour. Short sellers were attacking his biggest investment, and an investor backlash had begun towards the high valuations that some of his stocks had built up during pandemic lockdowns.

From the start of November to the end of January 2022, his PAC Global Esports hedge fund fell 53 per cent. It looked like the boutique funds management business he started four years earlier, PAC Capital, might live up to only one of the attributes it was named after: persistence, ambition and consistency.