Valiant Capital Partners’ liquid portfolio lost about 5 percent in August, the second straight monthly loss, according to an email communication with investors seen by Institutional Investor.
Even so, the hedge fund headed by Tiger Grandcub Chris Hansen remained up more than 23 percent for the year, making it one of the best-performing Tiger-related hedge funds as well as a top hedge fund in general. It is also doing twice as well as the S&P 500.
By contrast, Tiger Cub Maverick Capital, another top performer, is up 17.7 percent this year through August after gaining less than 1 percent last month, according to a hedge fund database.
Valiant, in its second-quarter letter, obtained by II, told clients it was “well above” its high-water mark as of the end of June after losing 38 percent and 10 percent-plus in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
In fact, the 29.11 percent second-quarter return marked its best quarter since Valiant’s 2008 inception. It was driven by the long book, which kicked in 50 percentage points to performance. The short book, which added to performance in the first half of the year, has unsurprisingly been a drag of late amid the surging stock market. Shorts accounted for most of July’s loss, an investor says.
In August, Valiant lost more money from its shorts than its longs, but from an alpha perspective the shorts are said to have generated what an investor calls a decent amount of alpha/outperformance as the longs underperformed.
Valiant declined to comment.
II previously reported that Valiant’s new side-pocket vehicle focused on the power industry surged 52 percent gross and 36 percent net for the year through July, according to two investors.
“The crux of our power thesis is that growing power demand is far more broad-based and global than investors realize, [that it] is not being driven solely by AI data centers, and that the demand of critical infrastructure (particularly in transmission and distribution equipment) far exceeds supply and is likely to continue for the next five to ten years,” Hansen reminded investors in the second-quarter letter.
In the second quarter, Hansen said, power investments on the long side “outperformed significantly” as the firm’s thesis continued to play out. “Company fundamentals accelerated well beyond consensus expectations, and tightness in generation and supply chain equipment grew,” he added. “And while other investors are slowly coming around to our thesis, we believe there is a long, long way to go. We continue to have a significant variant perception around the supply-demand gap for power in the U.S. and globally away from AI, as well as the duration of the cycle.”
Hansen insisted that Valiant’s “out-year estimates” remain far above Street expectations for all of the stocks and companies it owns.
At the end of the second quarter, Valiant’s largest equity long was Germany’s Siemens Energy. Its second-largest was Core Scientific, a Bitcoin mining and data center operator that has agreed to be acquired by CoreWeave.
Rounding out the top five were contract chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing; drug giant Eli Lilly; and GE Vernova, an energy equipment manufacturing and services company formed from the merger and subsequent spin-off of General Electric’s energy businesses in 2024.
