Thread by @puppyeh1

Pt 1 seemed to be popular so here is 'Raper Capital Origin Story', pt 2. The year: 2015.

For the original thread and 2014, see 👇👇

https://twitter.com/puppyeh1/status/1412310808625770497

2015 was a very different kind of year to 2014. Obviously the SPX went down (-1% but still down). I had moved from NYC to Singapore so my natural focus also shifted back to Asia, and in particular, Japanese stocks.

Shorting saved me in 2015, bigly. Here's how it went...

+39% vs SPX -1%, so obvi still a good outcome but it felt very hard at the time. My Sharpe fell, substantially, to 1.6 and I suffered a number of sizable drawdowns...making the yr much trickier:

Still there were many valuable lessons to be had. $LOOK (-6%) - a big winner in 2014 on the short side - doubled, then doubled again, in my face, on nothing - teaching the dangers of shorting small cap stocks (even zeroes). This was a lesson I would continually relearn...

...and I took some big licks on discrete long positions:

$AGFS (+ warrants) cost me ~11%. Busted SPAC that seemed too good to be true and was. The real error was the sizing of the bet tho 🤮
$MWW was a busted turnaround than never turned...another dangerous theme (-4%)

I was fortunate to have some v chunky winners on the short side - basically all in Japan and most all credit-based equity shorts (busted cap structures/equity recapitalizations). Sharp ($6753.T) and Toshiba ($6502.T) were the gifts that kept on giving...those two alone made 25%..

...but it was an incredibly fertile environment for shorts, and credit-based shorts, in particular: I had big wins w/ $ZQK (Quiksilver), $RDEN, $CLUB, and $1157.HK as well...

Looking back on it these were the 'good old days' where a credit-based skillset actually paid...

So whilst I got taken to the woodshed on a few large shorts like $LOOK I also made it back and then some by taking size shorts in conviction positions. Indeed I still stuck, and stick, to this idea that conviction bets need to be sized up - even on shorts. This saved me in 2015:

Also, I continued to write up most of my bigger conviction calls (Quiksilver, RDEN, etc) either on SA. For a blast down memory lane here is the $ZQK writeup - one I am still proud of today...

seekingalpha.com/article/272348…

All in all 2015 was, if not chastening, then certainly challenging. I felt I acquitted myself well in tougher conditions - but still felt I had the wherewithal to manage more $$ professionally and was pretty confident heading into 2016...👊👊