Commentary

The largest market-related news event during January was the performance of heavily shorted shares including GameStop, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Blackberry. These price moves were driven mainly by retail investors, facilitated by Reddit’s WallStreetBets chat room and free trading on platforms like Robinhood. Hedge Funds that were heavily short these stocks sustained material losses that will be difficult for them to recover from. For example, Melvin Capital was reported to have declined >50% during the month.

As is typical on Wall Street, when there is blood in the streets, the sharks will circle. The sharks looked through the portfolios of the Hedge Funds experiencing the most pain and commenced selling their long positions, in anticipation that the weakened Hedge Funds would have a flood of redemptions and be forced sellers. This created some opportunities, which we took advantage of, and we added one new name (currently undisclosed) to the portfolio, however, in aggregate the portfolio remained relatively unchanged.

The portfolio remains meaningfully differentiated from the Market. Approximately 43% of the fund is invested in the US, vs the Market’s c55% weight, it does not hold a single FAANG stock, and it is overweight Europe and Asia. In aggregate, we calculate the fund is on a c5% FCF yield, 10% revenue growth, and has zero debt (the companies held by the fund are actually net cash). These metrics compare favourably to the broader market, which gives us some optimism about the Fund’s outlook.