Everyone knows Jim Simons built the greatest money machine at Renaissance, but few know about Meritage Group, founded by his son Nat in 1997.

Instead of exploiting inefficiencies in data, he exploited human psychology and became one of the best compounding funds.

Let’s dive in! Meritage originally started as a fund of hedge funds in 1997, operating as a P&L line item inside Renaissance's Medallion Fund.

The idea was to invest excess capital from Medallion's massive returns into uncorrelated strategies.

Nelson Peltz went from a delivery truck driver to one of the most successful activist investors on Wall Street.

By taking a “constructive activist” approach, he has helped turn around huge brands like P&G and Heinz.

Let’s dive in! Nelson Peltz’s story started unconventionally. He dropped out of Wharton to become a ski instructor but ended up driving a delivery truck for his family’s business.

Eventually, he got to manage the business and transformed it into a major food conglomerate.

Duan Yongping built an $11.5 billion stock portfolio with one stock making up 60% of his fund!

Duan is a little-known Chinese entrepreneur-turned investor who was an early investor in NTES, AAPL, and PDD.

Let’s dive into his investment strategy and stock portfolio today: Duan founded BBK Electronics in 1995.

BBK became a consumer electronics powerhouse, later launching the smartphone brands OPPO, Vivo, OnePlus, and Realme, which today control a massive portion of China's smartphone market.

Mark Massey at AltaRock Partners has quietly built one of the most impressive investing track records with 14% annualized returns over 20+ years vs. the S&P 500’s 8.9%.

He has 90% of the portfolio in just 5 stocks!

Let’s dive into his investing strategy and top stocks today: Mark Massey got into investing after being inspired by his dad who always talked about stocks around the dinner table.

Fueled by his curiosity to learn, he got unpaid jobs at his local Merrill Lynch office and got a job on the buy-side at Fidelity right after college.

William von Mueffling posted 30%+ annual returns by shorting dot-com darlings.

In 2003, he founded Cantillon Capital and grew it into a $20B fund by investing in what he calls “financial productivity at a discount.”

Let’s dive into his investment strategy and favorite stocks: William formed the foundation for his process at Columbia Business School, where he learned about business cycles and heard the best investors speak at Bruce Greenwald’s class.

That cemented his philosophy of buying a dollar for fifty cents with a margin of safety.

Polen Capital is a $50+ billion fund that has delivered a 14% annualized return over 35 years.

The key to their process is 5 strict criteria that only 150 companies meet.

Let’s dive into their investment strategy and favorite stocks today: David Polen founded the fund in 1979 and built the firms’ philosophy around investing in 25 of the best businesses globally that in aggregate can grow EPS at 15%+.

In 2012, David passed away, but the firm's philosophy continues to live on under CEO Stan Moss.

Eric Mandelblatt started Soroban Capital at 35 with $500M and built it into a $10B fund over 15 years.

He has compounded at a 21% CAGR since inception, and is an expert at investing in cyclical stocks most investors won’t touch.

Let's dive into his investment strategy + story: Eric started his career at Goldman Sachs as an equity research analyst covering energy & power in 1998, including Enron.

After 4 years learning about commodities, he joined Goldman's Principal Strategies Group as a buy-side analyst, shaping his views on cycles and capital flows.

Roper Technologies is a serial acquirer that outperformed Berkshire Hathaway over 20+ years by buying software so boring that customers forget they pay for it.

Here's how $ROP built its own version of Constellation Software's playbook: Roper was founded in 1890 as a home appliance manufacturer.

But its real transformation came under CEO Brian Jellison (2001-2018), who developed Roper's M&A playbook targeting niche software businesses with a maniacal focus on cash return on investment (CRI).

Julian Robertson started Tiger Fund at 48 with $8.8M and built it into a $21B fund over 18 years.

Tiger generated 31.7% annualized returns vs. S&P 500's 12.7%.

Julian also built the best investing talent factory and pioneered the modern hedge fund industry.

Let’s dive in! Born in North Carolina, Julian was a Navy officer turned stockbroker at Kidder Peabody. By 1974 he ran their asset management division, but felt constrained.

He took his family to New Zealand for a year to write a book, hated the solitary life, and returned with a new mission.

Warren Buffett earned his legendary status in the partnership years of the '50s and '60s when he compounded at 23.8% annually vs. the Dow's 7.4% by investing in under-the-radar companies.

Brett Gardner's “Buffett's Early Investments” tells us how he did it.

Let's dive in! Buffett didn't just flip Moody’s Manuals and scoop up crazy bargains. Obvious quantitative bargains often had issues or were so thinly traded that Buffett had to put out ads to find sellers.

It has always been difficult to outperform the market, especially to Buffett's extent.

The biggest myth about market crashes? That they bottom when the economy improves.

LT3000 wrote a great article explaining the psychology of market bottoms and why markets always seem to recover "too early" and catch most investors off guard.

A thread on the 4 key takeaways: 1. Unknown unknowns drive crashes, not known risks

COVID, 9/11, the GFC. Each time, people say "this time really is different"

Market crashes happen when there's no clear past example to follow. In hindsight, it all seems obvious, but investors back then didn’t have clarity.

Microsoft tried to buy Intuit for $1.5B in 1994. When rejected, Gates vowed to crush them.

30 years later, $INTU is worth $170B while Microsoft Money is dead.

Here's how a small tax software startup outmaneuvered the tech giant and built a financial software empire: In 1983, Intuit was founded by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx, driven by their vision to create a personal finance program to simplify money management

Their first product Quicken beat 46 competitors through its simplicity and was the best-selling consumer software product by 1988

Warren Buffett loves monopoly-like businesses with pricing power.

That's why he owns $200M of this stock.

Here's why this stock has beaten the market over the past 20 years. The company is Heico $HEI, a serial acquirer in the aerospace industry.

Its competitor, TransDigm $TDG, has also seen terrific returns as a serial acquirer.

Billionaire investors like Warren Buffett and Ken Fisher are both invested in Heico.

Wayne Huizenga is one of the most prolific and successful entrepreneurs in US history.

He was the first person to ever build three Fortune 500 companies: Waste Management, Blockbuster, and AutoNation, despite never graduating college.

Let’s dive into how he did it! Wayne dropped out of college after 3 semesters and spent a brief stint in the military before joining a garbage collection service like his successful grandfather.

After getting a handle on the business, he borrowed $5,000 from his father-in-law to buy a truck and some clients.

Shad Rowe at Greenbrier Partners was an incredible investor and human being. He sadly recently passed away from cancer.

One of his big wins was buying Southwest Airlines at a $5M market cap and holding until it reached >$20B.

In this thread, I share a bit of his amazing story: Shad got into investing after his father recommended he use his summer construction job savings to buy Central Airlines stock.

He bought 200 shares at $2.25, and it was acquired for $14 a year and a half later. That motivated him to learn all he could about investing.

Josh Tarasoff, founder of Greenlea Lane Capital, pitched Amazon in 2012.

Although the stock traded at a $100B market cap and 179x trailing GAAP EPS, he believed it would return 30% annually over the next decade; it ended up doing ~26%.

Let’s dive into his thesis! Josh’s thesis rested on 3 points:

1. AMZN possessed a structurally better business model than physical retailers

2. The size of the e-commerce tailwind was underestimated

3. AMZN’s earnings power was understated by looking at revenue growth and GAAP operating margins

Larry Goldstein at Santa Monica Partners is one of the most underrated Superinvestors.

He's earned 18% gross annualized returns over 40 years by investing in overlooked small-cap stocks, including being an early investor in the single best-performing US stock.

Let’s dive in! Larry started his career at the bank Burnham & Company where he would make a name for himself on small/illiquid stocks

One of his first successes was Overnite Transportation, trading on the Pink Sheets, which was selling at 1.5x P/E; his $3000 investment grew to >$100K

“An investor that earns a 16% IRR over a decade will end up with more money than one that earns a 20% IRR for 9 years and loses 15% in the 10th year” – Seth Klarman

In this thread, I cover 7 common portfolio management biases and how you can avoid them.

Let’s dive in! Sin 1: Illusion of Knowledge (Gluttony)

We tend to become overconfident when we have spent a lot of time understanding an investment.

The more data we’re given, the more confident we feel, even if the data doesn’t really improve our accuracy.

Bryan Lawrence at Oakcliff Capital is one of the most underrated Superinvestors, achieving 17% annualized returns since 2004.

He has only raised $3M net despite having $270M AUM today.

In this thread, we dive into their investment process and strategy: Bryan graduated from Harvard and started his career at the investment bank Lazard.

He pitched buying Amazon bonds during the Dot Com crash when they were trading at 40 cents on the dollar and implying that the company was going to be insolvent.

This company started as a small internal project within Morgan Stanley.

Now, it's exploded into its own $40B+ company and has delivered 2,400%+ returns over the last 17 years.

Let's dive in! MSCI started in 1969 as a division of Morgan Stanley, to help institutional investors gain international stock exposure through global equity indexes.

By 2007, MSCI spun off as an independent public company, trading under the ticker $MSCI.

Randolph McDuff is one of the best investors you’ve never heard of.

Over the last 24 years, he has achieved a 21.5% IRR, resulting in a 100-bagger on his entire portfolio!

Let’s dive in to see how he did it as well as some of his favorite stocks today! Hailing from The Pas, a cold, remote town in Manitoba, Canada, he graduated in 1986 with an economics degree and spent 14 years as a stockbroker.

He saved $2M by 2000 after living a frugal lifestyle driving a 1991 Toyota 4Runner and living in a $150K house.