Friesian Capital
Alternative asset manager that operates exclusively in liquid, publicly-traded securities on a performance-fee-only basis with a primary emphasis on risk control.
What We Do
We believe that superior returns in public markets come from keeping losses small, having the discipline to wait for the infrequent opportunities to add significant exposure at low risk, and holding our winning positions for as long as possible.
Our edge comes from how fanatically we apply these time-tested principles to achieve our goal: to maximize compounded annual returns over time while always keeping maximum NAV drawdown less than 10%.
To align our economic incentives with our approach, we insist that our limited partners pay only for performance (in excess of a pre-defined hurdle rate) — we do not believe in management fees.
Portfolio Manager
After graduating from the 3-year JD-MBA program at Northwestern University, Connor Wilson spent seven years at two large hedge funds in New York (Citadel Global Equities, Point72) as an investment analyst, but he manages his own fund in Charleston with a different approach.
The three most important lessons Wilson took away from his hedge fund experience are: (1) playing without an edge in the markets destroys value over time, (2) compelling edges in the markets (i.e. highly asymmetric reward potential with low risk) arise reliably but infrequently, and (3) most managers play without an edge most of the time because management fee incentives compel them to be always fully invested.
By removing the management fee and explicitly pursuing a strategy of less frequent, larger gains partially offset by more frequent, small losses (and a willingness to hold cash when compelling edges are absent), Wilson believes he has found an approach that better optimizes for performance and better aligns our incentives with those of our limited partners.