From Soros to Old Farm: How to Identify the Market’s Top Thematic Risk-Takers | Kieran Cavanna | Old Farm Partners
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The famous quote that Besson said about once a week, which is make sure the main thing is the main thing. And right now, the main thing is AI CapEx. And I learned a lot from Besson. He really came up with a great strategy where we did co investing with hedge funds. What I find is that the intellectually curious love doing these co invests in the public market. They love the pursuit, because part of their book that could be up 100% in a year, those are the people I'm seeking. And I'm seeing a lot of good opportunities. For whatever reason, in the last year, it's been extraordinary.
This episode is brought to you by QIA NXT. You'll hear more about how you can take the next step for your clients with their alternatives education courses later in the show. Let's get into it. Welcome to other people's money. I'm your host, Max Wheatley. And today, I'm joined by Kieran Cavanagh, founder and CIO of Old Farm Partners, a New York based fund of funds, and he's also the host of the thematic investors podcast. Kieran, thank you so much for joining me today.
Max, thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate it.
I wanna start out with a little bit of your past experience. You spent a number of years at Soros Fund Management as the head of external managers. Soros, obviously, a legend in the hedge fund industry. Most people don't think about Soros as allocating a lot to external managers. So I would just love to start there and hear what they were looking for for external managers and and what could be additive to to a legendary firm like that?
Just to tell you, I barely interacted with George Soros. I actually interacted on a daily basis with Scott Besson, who was my boss there. So that's really what I knew there. But Soros is amazing firm in that they've had a long history of allocating externally actually at least twenty plus years. And it's an incredible program that they run that I enjoyed being a part of. I didn't start it. I didn't finish it. They're still doing stuff. But, it's not dissimilar to what anyone else is looking for, like a good allocator. They're just a lot bigger than everybody else.
So when you say it's not dissimilar, are they looking for other macro managers, finding strategies that they don't have the expertise on in house? What is really additive to that process?
Yeah, it's been a long time since I've been there, but I've known them before I worked there. And then when I did, they're just looking for great alpha generators that they may not have inside. And it can be across equity credit macro. It could be anything. I learned a great deal by having internal people as well as external risk takers. And it was such a good experience because you could have people who are real domain experts next to you. That was very unusual for an allocator because I had been at a group called Titan Advisors for about ten years and where we're just straight up allocators.
I know that that co invest model definitely makes up a lot of what you do at Old Farm, But I I wanna just zoom out a little bit and and talk about the the manager due diligence process and sourcing managers. You don't get into this business as a portfolio manager unless you think you're great. Every single person you talk to thinks what they do is unique and, proprietary. You've heard all of the words. You've seen it all. Everybody has their special secret sauce, but you you've looked at at more funds than than anybody possibly has room for in their brain. So, you know, how how much do people
You know, everybody's greedy. And so there's a lot of greedy, smart people out there. And I mea
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