Rowan Street Capital’s Q1 2019 Investor Letter

Rowan Street Capital is a hedge fund founded by a chartered financial analyst Alex Kopelevich, who has 18 years of professional experience in investing. Before launching his own investment manager, Mr. Kopelevich worked at U.S. Trust Bank of America Private Wealth Management as an Equity Analyst and Portfolio Manager. He graduated with a B.S. in Finance from the University of Southern California (Marshall School of Business). The fund usually runs a concentrated portfolio of stocks that tend to hold for a long period of time (3-5 years). Recently, Rowan Street Capital Released its Q1 2019 Investor Letter, a copy of which you can track down below. In it, the fund posted a 19% return (gross) for the quarter, outperforming the S&P 500, which returned 13%.

“Dear Partners,

We have just closed on our best quarter yet since inception. In the first quarter of 2019, Rowan Street was up +19% (gross) vs. +13% for the S&P 500 Index. April has been a good month for us as well: year-to-date as of this letter the fund is up +28% (gross).

Here is how we stacked up over the past 15 months from January 1, 2018 until March 31, 2019 (gross of fees):

Rowan Street Capital+25%

S&P 500 Index+9%

MSCI ACWI ex-USA-5%

When you received your 2018 end-of-year statements, your investment returns for 2018 did not look very exciting, although you did much better than the overall stock market. However, if you add just three more months of return on top of your 2018 return, the past 15 months have been the best wealth creation period in the history of Rowan Street Capital.

There are many lessons here, as our returns did not come in a straight line, by any means. December was a difficult month in the market as we explained in our 2018 year-end letter. However, we stuck to our guns and took advantage of newly created opportunities in December, and our convictions have already started to pay off as you can tell from our 2019 results.”

 You can download a copy of Rowan Street Capital’s Q1 2019 Investor Letter:

Rowan-Street-Capital-Q1-2019-Letter-3

You can also see the list of our 2019 Q1 investor letters and download them on this page.