Talk about volatility.
Daniel Benton’s Andor Opportunity Fund, run out of Rye Brook, New York–based Andor Capital Management, was up 19.5 percent in June — yes, in June alone.
But believe it or not, the technology stock–heavy long-short equity fund is not in positive territory for the year. This is because it was down 21 percent through May and off 12 percent through April.
Benton, a co-founder of the once high-flying but now defunct hedge fund Pequot Capital Management, has always lived and died on the fortunes of tech and Internet stocks. Going into the second quarter, the fund had about $1.9 billion in equities. Its top five holdings alone accounted for more than 50 percent of assets, and they are all on the unofficial who’s who of the biggest, most volatile momentum stocks.
They include No. 1 holding Tesla Motors. It was up 15 percent in June alone. Tesla surged 37 percent in the first five months of the year and was up 60 percent in the first half of the year.
Twitter, the firm’s third-largest holding, fell 35 percent in the first half of the year. However, it was up 26 percent in June, helping to fuel the month’s move.
Another big winner in June was No. 7 holding SunEdison. Shares of the semiconductor maker surged nearly 15 percent last month.
Meanwhile, class-A shares of Google, Andor’s second-largest holding, are up only 5.5 percent for the first half of the year. However, at one point this year, they had fallen by 15 percent from their peak to trough. Shares of Apple, the firm’s fourth-largest position, are up 17 percent for the year. However, they were up less than 3 percent in June. Andor’s fifth-largest holding, Facebook, rose more than 6 percent last month and gained about 23 percent in the first half of the year.
Benton has spent nearly three decades in the investment business, including a stint as a technology analyst with Goldman Sachs. Back in 1986, he co-founded Pequot with Arthur Samberg as a division of Dawson-Herman Capital Management. Pequot broke away from Dawson-Herman in 1999. (Samberg subsequently shut down Pequot after he was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.)
Benton spun off from Pequot in 2001 to create Andor Capital Management, taking roughly $7.5 billion with him in the split. At its peak, in 2003, Andor managed $9.6 billion.
Benton closed down his then-$2 billion Andor Capital Management back in 2008 when he — and scores of other hedge fund managers — lost huge sums amid the global financial meltdown. At the time, he cited in part, the “desire to devote more time to my family and other interests” as a reason for closing his firm down. He began raising money again in 2011.
