13F Investing Doesn’t Work, Right?

I’ve been writing about 13F investing strategies for a long, long, time.  Almost no where else in finance is there more disinformation on a topic.  Honestly, I don’t think the SEC should make funds publish their holdings, but since they do, it is silly to not track what other managers are doing.  

My first article on Seth Klarman was over 7 years ago (wowza).  I used to even write some articles for Forbes print magazine on the topic.  The last time I did I covered Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group.  And sure enough I had a ton of hecklers online and sure enough a few weeks after the post he had a biotech stock get bought out.

Fast forward to 2014 and this summer Klarman owned Idenix which got bought out for a whopping 200+% premium netting Baupost over a billion dollars.

His simple top 10 clone has beaten the market by over 10% a year since 2000, and 10/15 years since 2000.

2014?  Up 50%.

Yep, nothing to see here.  My favorite thing about Baupost though is their holdings are almost always unique.  Many hedge funds simply look like a copycat of other funds.  Equity curve followed by top holdings:

Source: AlphaClone (PS know who else is having a great year? Pershing Square….)