D1 Capital Partners picked up in January where it left off last year.
The Tiger Grandcub led by Dan Sundheim posted a strong 7.72 percent gain in its public portfolio last month after surging more than 44 percent in 2024, says someone who has seen the results. It was one of several Tiger Management descendants to start the new year off well.
D1 emphasizes industrials and consumer stocks. The firm’s largest position all last year was Maplebear, the parent of Instacart. The stock accounted for nearly 18 percent of U.S.-listed long positions even after D1 cut its stake by more than 22 percent in the third quarter, the last quarter for which this information is available. (Public data for year-end holdings will be available later this week.) The stock gained more than 16 percent in January alone.
Trucking giant XPO and Philip Morris International were the next-two-largest long positions, together making up more than 17 percent of assets.
Light Street Capital Management also had a good start to 2025. The tech-driven hedge fund firm headed by Glen Kacher posted a 4.14 percent gain in its long-short fund last month, with its long-only strategy up 4.22 percent, according to someone who has seen the results.
The Tiger Cub’s success was somewhat surprising given its heavy bet on chip stocks, based on data as of the end of September. At the end of the third quarter, Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing combined to account for about 30 percent of U.S.-listed long assets. Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom also ranked among the firm’s top-five holdings, together representing more than 14 percent of long assets, according to the most recent 13F regulatory filing.
Of course, chip and other tech stocks were rocked earlier in January when China’s Deepseek suddenly emerged as a major threat to existing artificial intelligence players. Many of these stocks have remained volatile since then. For example, shares of Nvidia, Light Street’s largest long position at the end of September, were down more than 10 percent in January. AMD and Broadcom were both down about 4 percent last month. TSMC, however, rose 6 percent.
The fact that Light Street’s long-short and long-only funds performed more or less in line with each other suggests that Light Street did not get a big boost from its shorts.
Elsewhere in the Tiger kingdom, Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management gained 4.4 percent in January. At the end of the third quarter, Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Microsoft were three of the Tiger Cub’s four largest U.S.-listed longs, accounting for more than 21 percent of capital. TSMC was the fifth-largest. Meta was one of the big winners amid the January tech turmoil, surging more than 17 percent, and Amazon climbed more than 8 percent.
Elsewhere, Viking Global Investors’ long-short fund was up 2 percent in January, according to the source. Unlike many other Tiger Cubs, the hedge fund headed by O. Andreas Halvorsen does not overemphasize tech stocks.
For example, in the third quarter, financial services giant US Bancorp became the firm’s largest U.S.-listed long, replacing Amazon after Viking slashed its stake by more than half. It also fully unloaded its positions in Meta and cloud computing company Datadog. Shares of US Bancorp were flat in January. Adobe was the second-largest long, followed by three consumer-oriented companies: Apple, Philip Morris, and Visa. Adobe was down about 1.5 percent last month, Apple was off more than 5 percent, Philip Morris rose more than 8 percent, and Visa increased about 8 percent.
Meanwhile, Robert Citrone’s Discovery Capital Management was up 2.92 percent last month, says an investor. The hedge fund is a combination macro and fundamental equity specialist.
