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Ryan Morris-28 year old activist investor


eclecticvalue

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Fascinating!  A newly minted MBA grad with no prior business pedigree is in the business of being an activist investor.

 

I sure hope he reads and internalizes this Warren Buffett statement,

"Can you really explain to a fish what it's like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value."

 

May be then he will understand the meaning of being an "activist investor"?

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I would rather encourage you all to read Ryan's outstanding partnership letters. ;)  ...They should be in everyone's file cabinet, because he's definitely a value investor to keep in eye on.

 

http://www.mesoncapital.com/

 

http://www.mesoncapital.com/letters/2009_H1_MCP_Letter.pdf

 

http://www.mesoncapital.com/letters/2009_Q4_MCP_Annual_Letter.pdf

 

http://www.mesoncapital.com/letters/2010_Q4_MCP_Annual_Letter.pdf

 

http://www.mesoncapital.com/letters/2011_Q4_MCP_Annual_Letter.pdf

 

 

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A two part interview with Ryan J. Morris:

 

Interview: Ryan Morris (Meson Capital Partners) Part 1

Published: September 11, 2012

http://sumzero.com/headlines/financials_and_insurance/33-ryan-morris-meson-interview-part-1

 

Interview: Ryan Morris (Meson Capital Partners) Part 2

Published: September 11, 2012

http://sumzero.com/headlines/financials_and_insurance/34-ryan-morris-meson-interview-part-1

 

Ryan Morris: I feel like all the risk people are talking about today is overall market risk. Every tail insurance type policy seems overpriced to me – every bird in the sky is a black swan with a fat tail!  With respect to risks that come up with all individual investments – particularly in the small cap universe where I focus - I’d say that the biggest risk that I don’t hear talked about is the governance side.  The quality of corporate governance for smaller companies is just such a mixed bag and I don’t think people pay enough attention to it.  Almost all of my investment mistakes have been related to that and it’s a fairly subtle thing until you have some experience with it.  I know a lot of people who buy stocks based on profit guidance but they really need to take a closer look at the accounting and keeping track of how closely CEOs do what they say and how intellectually honest they are about their mistakes.

 

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I would rather encourage you all to read Ryan's outstanding partnership letters. ;)  ...They should be in everyone's file cabinet, because he's definitely a value investor to keep in eye on.

 

http://www.mesoncapital.com/

 

http://www.mesoncapital.com/letters/2009_H1_MCP_Letter.pdf

 

http://www.mesoncapital.com/letters/2009_Q4_MCP_Annual_Letter.pdfs

 

http://www.mesoncapital.com/letters/2010_Q4_MCP_Annual_Letter.pdf

 

http://www.mesoncapital.com/letters/2011_Q4_MCP_Annual_Letter.pdf

 

Yes, he writes well and acknowledges his mistakes readily. He seems to like hairy or levered situations where the risk of permanent capital loss is higher.

 

In my opinion, it's a hard way to make money being an activist in small caps that may or may not turnaround. I enjoy reading about Parsad or James or Allan's investments more but each has his own investing style I guess.

 

cheers

qleap

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  • 1 year later...

how hard is it to set up a hedge fund? Any forum members who went through this? Seems the best way is to find smart investors who are willing to vouch for you if they think your thinking process is right. And you have a few good years of succesfull picks behind you.

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any chance it's just an exceedingly well crafted image and we're all being snookered?

 

guaranteed, just take a quick look at his performance post 2009, he managed to wipe out his initial "synthetic" several 100% advantage over S&P performance in just a few years...

 

regards

rijk

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how hard is it to set up a hedge fund? Any forum members who went through this? Seems the best way is to find smart investors who are willing to vouch for you if they think your thinking process is right. And you have a few good years of succesfull picks behind you.

 

depends on your pedigree and connection/how much you are starting with/how good of a salesman you are/and a big dose of luck. assume you can raise 10-50 mil from yourself/family/connections, you basically have 3 years to show strong (30%+) and consistent returns. If you are still in the business after 2-3 years, your fund should be at least $100 mil by then. Then you are investable to the institutions. Good fortunes can snowball from here. That's my understanding of the state of the industry right now. Vast majority of the potential investors are outcome focused and only care your performance so luck plays a big part especially you only have a year or two to show good performance

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how hard is it to set up a hedge fund? Any forum members who went through this? Seems the best way is to find smart investors who are willing to vouch for you if they think your thinking process is right. And you have a few good years of succesfull picks behind you.

 

depends on your pedigree and connection/how much you are starting with/how good of a salesman you are/and a big dose of luck. assume you can raise 10-50 mil from yourself/family/connections, you basically have 3 years to show strong (30%+) and consistent returns. If you are still in the business after 2-3 years, your fund should be at least $100 mil by then. Then you are investable to the institutions. Good fortunes can snowball from here. That's my understanding of the state of the industry right now. Vast majority of the potential investors are outcome focused and only care your performance so luck plays a big part especially you only have a year or two to show good performance

yea the thing is, Im pretty confident about my picks. ANd I think i could with little extra work invest like 10-20 million$ in those stocks. My goal isn't really to make enourmous amounts of money. Just leverage what I am currently doing, with little extra effort. Even 5 million$ would be ok, Im ok with living everywhere, so i figure I could cheaply set up a fund for that. I guess I would first have to try and get my family in then.

 

letter I found from his hedge fund:

http://www.mesoncapital.com/letters/2011_Q4_MCP_Annual_Letter.pdf

 

oh wait they were closed positions. Anyone has a list of his current holdings?

 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1801362-odyssey-marine-an-open-letter-to-ryan-morris-of-meson-capital

 

Anyway it seems strange to be a huge fan of buffett and then do short selling.

 

http://seekingalpha.com/author/meson-capital-partners/articles

 

I also read up a little bit about that stock, and some short sellers did seem to use some shady tactics.

 

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I believe his two largest holdings are INFU and LEI.

 

I'm basing that on the fact that he started the year managing about $10 million. It looks likes he's up to $15 million now.

 

His fund owns(ed) about $3 million of INFU and ($2.14 a share at the start of the year and 1.5 million shares) and LEI $5.5 million (about $1 at the start of the year and almost 5.5 million shares). Though I think there is some legal structure to help reduce the risk of LEI (not sure how that works though).

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how hard is it to set up a hedge fund? Any forum members who went through this? Seems the best way is to find smart investors who are willing to vouch for you if they think your thinking process is right. And you have a few good years of succesfull picks behind you.

depends on your pedigree and connection/how much you are starting with/how good of a salesman you are/and a big dose of luck. assume you can raise 10-50 mil from yourself/family/connections, you basically have 3 years to show strong (30%+) and consistent returns. If you are still in the business after 2-3 years, your fund should be at least $100 mil by then. Then you are investable to the institutions. Good fortunes can snowball from here. That's my understanding of the state of the industry right now. Vast majority of the potential investors are outcome focused and only care your performance so luck plays a big part especially you only have a year or two to show good performance

yea the thing is, Im pretty confident about my picks. ANd I think i could with little extra work invest like 10-20 million$ in those stocks. My goal isn't really to make enourmous amounts of money. Just leverage what I am currently doing, with little extra effort. Even 5 million$ would be ok, Im ok with living everywhere, so i figure I could cheaply set up a fund for that. I guess I would first have to try and get my family in then.

 

All the non-investment stuff has the biggest potential for sucking away your time.

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