SumZero News Archive

  • Exclusive Manager Interview on Facebook

    Published: September 20, 2018

    Christopher Devlin founded Selective Wealth Management in 2009, after a brief stint as a nuclear engineer. The firm's investment methodology focuses on investing in companies with six common characteristics: 1. Lasting Products of Services, 2. Durable Competitive Advantage, 3. Highly Profitable, ...

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  • An Open Letter to Goldman's CFO on Employee Compensation

    Published: September 18, 2018

    Bastiat Capital has recently published several pieces of research on Goldman Sachs share-based compensation culture on SumZero and elsewhere.

    We compiled this research and forwarded it to the board of Goldman Sachs, to which we received a comprehensive response from R. Martin Chavez, Goldman ...

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  • Top-Ranked Deep Value Manager's Latest Small-Cap Idea

    Published: September 13, 2018

    MRE

    John Rolfe, the founder and managing member of Argand Capital Advisors, has been one of SumZero's most prodigious and best performing members. Over the last decade, he has submitted 50 ideas to SumZero, generating an annualized average total return of 39.32% and an annualized median return of 32...

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  • The Great, Undiscovered CEOs Research Challenge

    Published: September 12, 2018

    SPY

    SumZero is pleased to launch a dedicated research challenge executed in exclusive partnership with a multi-billion New York City-based hedge fund. The Challenge is designed to identify actionable investments led by unsung, but nevertheless outstanding management teams. The participating fund is s...

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  • Advice from Top Ranked Micro Cap Specialist

    Published: September 05, 2018

    Michael Melby has written up a litany of small and micro caps on SumZero over the last several years. In the course of his SumZero membership, he has been ranked in the top 5 analysts on the site across our All-Time, LTM, Deep Value, Long, North America, and Micro-Cap ratings.

    Melby holds a ...

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  • Inter-Korean Diplomacy Stokes Optimism for Seoul-Based PM

    Published: September 01, 2018

    Although meaningful progress from the United States’ diplomatic overtures to North Korea has all but stalled since the June 2018 summit, Kim Jong-un continues to cooperate with President Moon Jae-in. With plans announced for a third inter-Korean summit this fall, the prospect of reconciliation on...

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  • Can Calumet Refine its Business Model?

    Published: August 16, 2018

    Bill Chen, the founder and PM of Rhizome Partners, has steadily built a reputation as one of SumZero’s best primary researchers.  His rigorous research approach is partly inspired by Phil Fisher’s ‘scuttlebutt’ style, and has attracted Rhizome a great deal of interest on SumZero.  A recent idea o...

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  • Top Ranked Manager on Norwegian Small Cap Opportunities

    Published: August 14, 2018

    Henrik Heffermehl is one of the most consistently and best ranked SumZero members, having topped our All-Time, Last Twelve Months, Long, GARP, Western Europe, Micro-Cap, and Energy rankings. Heffermehl is the Portfolio Manager of Oslo based Park Lane Family Office, where he specializes in Nordi...

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  • New Roles on SumZero's Job Vault

    Published: August 08, 2018

    SumZero’s Job Vault is now hosting over 100 investment professional roles of all seniority levels from 50+ major buyside funds.

    What is SumZero’s Job Vault?

    The Job Vault is a job listing platform that complements our research database. There are...

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  • Update to SumZero Buyside Posting Terms

    Published: August 03, 2018

    We are proud to announce a material update to SumZero Buyside's posting terms. Approved research ideas now earn 6 months of renewed database access versus the prior standard of 4 months.

    For the past 18 months, SumZero has been testing a variety of posting requirements to determine which yi...

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  • C.T. Fitzpatrick on Vulcan Value Partners & Portfolio Management

    Published: August 02, 2018

    C.T. Fitzpatrick founded $15B+ Vulcan Value Partners in 2007 after a seventeen career in investment management.  In some ways, he and his fund are classic value investors - looking to buy companies with strong moats that will compound over a multi-year time horizon.  In other striking ways,...

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  • SumZero Investor Profile Anthology

    Published: July 27, 2018

    Over the last year, SumZero has published profiles of several of our more prominent members. For the the first time, we are publishing an anthology of these investor profiles. This PDF contains interviews from legends in the investment management industry, including Aswath Damodaran, Mohnish Pab...

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  • Professor Aswath Damodaran on Valuation

    Published: July 13, 2018

    Professor Aswath Damodaran is currently a Professor of Finance at NYU's Stern School of Business.  He has been called Wall Street's "Dean of Valuation", and is widely respected as one of the foremost experts on corporate valuation.  Damodaran has published several books on equity valuation and co...

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  • Why Micron is Front and Center in the Trade War

    Published: July 12, 2018

    Last month, the New York Times shocked the semiconductor industry with an article detailing an elaborate heist of corporate secrets from Micron Technology's Taiwan office. The article, and later coverage in the Wall Street Journal uncovered systematic corporate espionage b...

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  • Mohnish Pabrai's Advice for Value Investors

    Published: June 27, 2018

    Mohnish Pabrai immigrated to the US from India to attend Clemson University in the 1980s.  He studied engineering, and after graduating worked in IT.  Following several years in the business, Pabrai founded, ran, and sold a small IT company.  One auspicious day after selling his company, he picke...

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  • New Roles in SumZero Job Vault (NYC, Boston, London)

    Published: June 22, 2018

    SumZero’s Job Vault is now hosting over 100 investment professional roles of all seniority levels from 50+ major buyside funds.

    What is SumZero’s Job Vault?

    The Job Vault is a job listing platform that complements our research database. There are...

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  • Why the US Cable Industry Is Poised for Recovery

    Published: June 21, 2018

    Billionaire cable titan John Malone is the best known cable entrepreneur in the United States. GCI Liberty (GLIBA), one of his holding companies, owns stakes in several cable assets including Charter Communications (CHTR), Liberty Broadband (LBRDK), and General Communications (GCI).  In the last ...

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  • Scott Miller's Advice for Emerging Managers

    Published: June 14, 2018

    Scott Miller is the Founder and Portfolio Manager of Greenhaven Road Capital. Greenhaven recently launched the Partners Fund, a fund of funds through which Miller will be investing into emerging managers. Prior to founding Greenhaven Road, Miller founded an education company called Accelero th...

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  • Scott Miller on Value Investing

    Published: June 14, 2018

    Scott Miller is the Founder and Portfolio Manager of Greenhaven Road Capital. Prior to founding Greenhaven Road, Miller founded an education company called Accelero that grew to 1000+ employees.

    Kevin Harris from SumZero sat down with Scott Miller to discuss Greenhaven Road Capital, small ca...

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  • Why Goldman Sachs Should Change Its Compensation Culture

    Published: June 14, 2018

    In the 1990s, Albert Meyer was an accounting professor at Spring Arbor University, a small Christian college in Michigan.  He had a background in forensic accounting, and through due diligence on one of the University's donors, exposed one of the biggest Ponzi-style frauds of the decade.

    'The ...

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  • Why Alliance Data is Trading at a Discount

    Published: June 07, 2018

    Alliance Data Systems Corporation ($ADS) is a large publicly traded provider of marketing services and loyalty card programs.   ADS has three distinct and eclectic business lines, a private label store credit card business, a data driven marketing company, and a Canadian coalition loyalty program...

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  • Hirtle Callaghan's CIO On OCIOs and Manager Selection

    Published: June 05, 2018

    The outsourced CIO (OCIO) model has picked up mass adoption over the last few decades. The idea is a good one.   Organizations like university endowments, foundations, and nonprofits, have the fiduciary duty to manage large pools of capital but may not have the organizational focus or desire to d...

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  • Who are the Buyside's Investment Heroes?

    Published: June 01, 2018

    SumZero is the world's largest community of buyside investment professionals, with over 14,000 members. As part of their user profiles, SumZero members can optionally indicate who their investment heros are and what their favorite books are.

    Warren Buffett was unsurprisingly the overwhelmin...

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  • Analyzing the Returns of SumZero's 'View from the Buyside'

    Published: June 05, 2018

    A year ago, Barron's and SumZero partnered to launch a new column titled 'View from the Buyside'. Barron's has since published 35 actionable ideas sourced from SumZero's Buyside community, the majority of which have outperformed the market. SumZero continues to feature member research in Barron...

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  • Why Hewlett Packard Enterprise Remains A Good Buy

    Published: June 01, 2018

    Meg Whitman controversially directed Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to spin out of Hewlett-Packard in 2015.  At the time, this was one of the largest spin outs in American corporate history.  HPE was organized into two divisions playing to HP's historic strengths, enterprise software and server...

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  • The Out of Print Book Hedge Funds Pay Thousands For

    Published: May 25, 2018

    As the world's largest network of buyside investment professionals, SumZero has a breadth of data on the hedge fund industry. One of the optional pieces of information that SumZero members can include on their membership profiles is their favorite investment book. We decided to compile our data ...

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  • Why Spruce Point Is Short US Concrete

    Published: May 24, 2018

    Ben Axler founded Spruce Point Capital Management in 2009 following a decade as a banker at Credit Suisse and Barclays. Spruce Point runs a short activist strategy, and since its founding has exposed multiple frauds, forced over a dozen CEOs and CFOs to resign, and caused several companies expose...

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  • Top Ranked Manager Finds Value In European Small Caps

    Published: May 23, 2018

    Jeff Meyers founded Cobia Capital, a value oriented long/short equity fund in 2008.  In the decade since, Meyers has carved out a niche and reputation for himself unmatched within the small cap technology space.  He has consistently been one of the top ranked analysts on SumZero, where he has gen...

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  • Netflix Defanged? Why this Hedge Fund Thinks So

    Published: May 17, 2018

    Netflix has been a large part of the recent FANG bull run in the stock market.  The video streaming platform now dominates the domestic video streaming market, and is now being forced to look externally to maintain its growth rate.  This moat is far wider than a language gap.  Deeply entrenched T...

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  • Van Biema Ex-US Contest Finalists Announced

    Published: May 10, 2018

    Van Biema Value Partners, a family office and investment adviser specializing in identifying, vetting, and investing in small, value-oriented hedge funds, and legendary value investor Chuck Royce are pleased to announce the (5) Finalists in the recently completed...

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  • Middleburg over Midtown? How Akre Capital Outperforms

    Published: April 26, 2018

    Tom Saberhagen is a Partner at Akre Capital Management, a $7 billion-plus asset manager based in Middleburg, VA. Prior to joining Akre, Saberhagen  was a senior analyst for Aegis Financial Corporation and worked in management consulting.

    SumZero interviewed Saberhagen 

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  • Are Dropship Businesses Amazon's Achilles Heel?

    Published: April 14, 2018

    In recent months, President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that Amazon exhibits monopolistic tendencies.  The jury is out as to whether this is the case, but Amazon certainly monopolizes ecommerce news.

    This changed briefly last month, when a consortium of private-equity firms announced a...

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  • Legend Chuck Royce on Small Cap Investing (and Manager Selection)

    Published: March 21, 2018

    Charles ("Chuck") Royce is currently president and co-chief investment officer of Royce & Associates LLC.  Royce is well known as one of the pioneers of small-cap investing, and his eponymous Royce Funds now manage in excess of $32 billion.  Prior to founding Royce & Associates in 1972, R...

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  • Why Taser Stock Could Have Shocking Upside

    Published: March 13, 2018

    Axon Enterprises (formerly TASER International) is best known for the electroshock weapons it near monopolistically provides to police departments internationally.   Axon has recently diversified into the growing police body camera segment with a line of body cameras that they are offering free (...

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  • Shorting The Oracle of (Boston) Omaha?

    Published: March 06, 2018

    Boston Omaha Corp., an investment vehicle into billboards and insurance, is up 100%+ in price from its IPO in June 2017.   Following the stock's stratospheric rise, managers Adam K Peterson, and Alex Buffett Rozek have been profiled in the

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  • Why This Danish Salmon Company's Stock Price Could Double

    Published: February 14, 2018

    The Faroe Islands are a windswept archipelago between Denmark and the United Kingdom.  Their biggest employer is Bakkafrost, a farmed salmon producer.   Bakkafrost is registered on the Oslo Stock exchange, and is one of the more prominent salmon producers in the Nordic region.  Robert Leitz of io...

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  • Mauboussin On The Future Of Active Management

    Published: February 12, 2018

    Michael Mauboussin is currently the Director of Research at BlueMountain Capital Management.  Prior to his role at BlueMountain, Michael was Head of Global Financial Strategies at Credit Suisse and Chief Investment Strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management.  He has also authored three books, an...

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