Arquitos Capital Up 30% CAGR On 5 Year Fund Anniversary

We profiled Steve Kiel in our latest edition and he is killing it yet again. See his Q1 letter below and find the full issue here. Also see

Arquitos Capital Up 55% In 2016 (28% CAGR) Amid Big

Hedge Fund Interview: Steven Kiel: Arquitos Capital … –

Arquitos Capital Partners returned 17.6% net of fees in the first quarter of 2017. Please see page four for more detailed performance information. We celebrated the fund’s five year anniversary on April 10. During that time period, we returned 30.9% annually net of fees, beating the S&P 500 by 17.2% per year and the HFRI Index, an index that broadly measures the performance of all hedge funds, by 26.9% per year. Before fees, the fund returned 38.8% annually. Arquitos provided positive returns in four out of five years and beat the market four out of five years. $100,000 invested at the outset is now worth $384,750. At that pace, your money has doubled every two years and seven months. Do not expect these astronomical gains to continue. We had a variety of things working in our favor. First, the market was up each year during this time period. The S&P 500 itself performed very well, netting 13.7% per year with dividends reinvested. While I have tried to invest in companies outside of the mainstream, we have still ridden a strong wave. Second, we are small. Assets under management today are $11 million. They were far smaller when we started and along the way. In the investment world, we are a speck. A brightly burning one, for sure, but still not much more than a piece of dust. Right now and since the launch of the fund, we have had the ability to make an investment in nearly any public company no matter the size. As assets grow, some of those companies will be too small for us to make a meaningful investment. My philosophy and approach will stay the same, but at some point the universe of opportunities will begin to shrink. We are not yet to that point, and may not get there for some time, but it will happen and it will have an effect on returns. In my first letter to you in 2012 I wrote about the partnership that Warren Buffett ran from 1957 to 1968. He beat the markets by about 16% per year and returned 25.3% per year to investors, with no down years, I might add. We simply will not beat that performance over the lifetime of our fund. The great thing is that because of the power of compound interest, we only have to do a fraction of our past performance in order to do well in the future. Compounding at 10% per year makes an initial $100,000 investment worth about $673,000 in 20 years and $1.75 million in 30 years. That is a tremendous gain. The keys for compounding are getting started and patience. When I started the fund I knew we would do well. A fundamental value strategy focused on long term results promised that. It turns out that trying to not lose money gives you a big advantage over the competition. I did not strive for this performance by taking risks. It came from investing in companies that I understood, companies that generally had strong balance sheets and low risk of permanent capital loss, and situations where the markets did not fully recognize attractive aspects of the business. We will continue to do well by taking this approach.

Arquitos Capital Partners 3Q16 Investor Letter; Up 14.6 ..

While I write these letters and provide performance returns each quarter, and you get investor statements monthly, this is far too short of a time period to make any determination of investment skill. Investors get excited or depressed about specific companies at various times. The emotional state of the market is not a reflection of the actual value of a company. That actual value will generally be reflected over time periods much longer than a month, a quarter, or a year. Ignore short term performance and focus on longer time periods. A three to five year time period is a better gauge. A track record over several market cycles is best. What has led to our success over the first five years?