Horseman Capital Management is a hedge fund launched in 2000 by John Horseman, with its headquarters located in London (Belgravia) and Jersey, UK. Its founder, John Horseman, has been the fund’s CEO and Director since its launching. He was also the fund’s portfolio manager until 2006 when the position was taken over by Russell Clark, who is the fund’s current investment and portfolio manager. Prior to founding his own investment firm, John Horseman was a manager at GAM (Global Asset Management), where he spent 10 years. Russel Clark was also employed at GAM before joining Horseman Capital, and prior to GAM, he cut his teeth at UBS Wealth Management. He holds a Bachelor degree in Economy and Asian studies, from the Australian National University, from which he graduated in 1999, taking a 1-year exchange at Kansai University, Japan.
The fund, owned entirely by its founders and run by the small team of experts, utilizes global long/short equity strategy. It mainly focuses on mid-cap (typically between $2 and $10 billion of market cap) and large-cap companies (over $10 billion), with the preference to those with market caps of more than $5 billion, and it is oriented toward investing in pooled funds. As the most recent data from their website shows, total assets under management were over $700 million on April 30th, 2019.
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When it comes to the fund’s performance, its Horseman Global Fund, L.P., for example, had both positive and negative returns in the last couple of years. In 2013, it brought back 19.80%, followed by a decrease in 2014 and a return of 12.49%. During the next year, 2015, the fund made slight progress returning 20.52%, which was the highest annual return in the last few years. In 2016, however, the company returned the lowest figure of -24.14%, recovering in the following year, with a positive return of 2.91%. Last year, through October, Horseman Global Fund, L.P. lost 7.95%. Its total return amounted to 237.45%, with a compound annual return of 7.81%, and the worst drawdown was 36.89.
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At the end of the first quarter of 2019, Horseman Capital Management’s equity portfolio was valued $290.64 million, which was by 4.92% higher compared to the previous quarter when it was $277.01 million. During the first quarter in 2019, the fund added 11 new positions, while removing 2 positions, having left with 45 positions at the end of the quarter. Of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds in Q1 of 2019, Horseman Capital Management held several of them, including Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) as the biggest one.
During the first quarter of 2019, the fund lost its interest in two positions. The bigger one was Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) which was worth $241,000 at the end of the last quarter of 2018, with 140 shares. Another sold position was iPath Series B S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (NYSE:VXX) which was worth $2.35 million, comprising of 50,000 shares.
Horseman Capital decided to trim 16 of its stakes during the Q1 2019. Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH) was lowered the most, more precisely, by 50% to 10,000 shares worth $724,000. The second company where the fund reduced its holdings the most was Abbvie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV). The fund’s stake was lowered by 48% to 11,000 Abbvie’s shares worth $886,000. On the other side, the fund raised its interest in Barclays Bk Plc (NYSE:BCS), increasing its stake by 1536% to 817,600 shares, worth $23.92 million.
Click here to read the rest of the article, where we discuss Horseman Capital’s biggest positions at the end of Q1 2019.
Disclosure: None.
This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
