At Hedge Fund Alpha (formerly ValueWalk Premium), we’ve been hard at work to bring you this Q3 2025 Special Edition issue of Hidden Value Stocks over the summer (the regular edition of Q4 will still be coming out in October).
This Special Edition features Andrew Reider and Gustavo Campanha of WHG Asset Management and Ryan O’Connor of Crossroads Capital.
WHG is leading HSBC hedge fund weekly rankings throughout 2025 as one of the best performing hedge funds in 2025. See here for example.
O’Connor's Crossroads is also killing it with 21% gross (17% net) CAGR returns since inception in 2016, including 28% YTD. O'Connor featured one aerospace company doubling, his other stock pick was an adtech company, which he thinks will be more than a triplebagger.
Please contact us at [email protected] with any comments, questions or suggestions.
Jacob Wolinsky, Founder, Hedge Fund Alpha
Michelle deBoer-Jones, Editor-in-Chief, Hedge Fund Alpha
Introduction to Ryan O’Connor and Crossroads Capital
Crossroads Capital has returned a blistering 26.1% year to date following an incredible 23.8% return in June.
Since the fund’s inception nine years ago, it has significantly outperformed its benchmarks and the S&P 500, generating an annualized return of 16.99% and a cumulative return of 315.84%.
A family legacy that started with lessons from Warren Buffett
Crossroads founder and Portfolio Manager Ryan O’Connor says he “caught the value investor bug” while in high school, when his grandfather gave him some shares of Berkshire Hathaway.
In fact, O’Connor’s grandfather, Bill O’Connor, a salesman at IBM, frequently played poker with Warren Buffett. He also sold Buffett his first typewriter and taught him how to use it, leading him to become an original limited partner for the Buffett Partnerships, later rolled into Berkshire Hathaway. This connection served to kickstart O’Connor’s interest in - and journey into - the investing world.
The first stocks he discovered on his own were Brookfield Asset Management and Markel around 2004, not long after he left university and “fell in love with value investing hard.”
A grandfather with a love for value investing
Growing up in Kansas City, O’Connor began studying Buffett’s methods long before he founded Crossroads Capital. His grandfather took some classes taught by Buffett at the University of Nebraska campus in Omaha, which piqued his interest in value investing. O’Connor’s grandfather quickly latched onto the power of a margin of safety, compound interest and contrarian thinking.
“As just one example, I can still remember the light in my grandfather’s eyes when he talked about Buffett,” O’Connor said. “He would regale me with stories of how Warren would make all kinds of brilliant connections, boiling down abstract financial topics into simple concepts anyone could understand. I was in early high school the first time he told me those stories, but one of the things that has always stayed with me was the sincerity in his voice.”
Get the full Hidden Value Stocks Q3 2025 Special Edition here.
Betting big time on Buffett
Bill O’Connor sold his shares in IBM to be able to buy into the Buffett Partnerships, coming up about $7,000 short of Buffett’s $25,000 minimum, although Buffett allowed him in anyway.
“It was a bold decision. My grandparents, who had six kids at that time and would eventually add four more, were committing their entire savings to a new partnership run by some young kid no one had heard of,” Ryan O’Connor recalled in his 2019 letter. “Buffett was an unknown then, even in Omaha, a socially awkward 20-something. His shirts were wrinkled and ill-fitting, with fraying cuffs. This was a pre-Toastmaster’s Warren, long before he became the master of the crowd he is today. Safe to say, from the outside looking in, the optics of investing looked positively insane. After all, there was no way to tell that he would eventually become known as arguably the greatest investor of all time.”
A Buffett “grandcub”
While Bill O’Connor got his lessons directly from Buffett, Ryan learned about investing from his grandfather. He said those lessons started as far back as he can remember, starting with simple lessons with easy-to-understand metaphors like “the acorn grows into a tree.” Eventually, the O’Connors moved onto the Rule of 72 and more advanced topics. Later, Ryan asked his grandfather what prevented him from taking some profits from the Buffett Partnership and diversifying. Bill told him that if he had known Buffett, he wouldn’t ask that question. Ryan felt this was the most important lesson his grandfather had ever given him.
“As an investor, I’ve learned that while it can be hard to know when to buy and when to sell, it’s hardest of all to develop the conviction that allows you simply to hold — and that’s how the real money is made,”O’Connor stated. “You have to develop insights, connect the dots, and see the runway, all while never giving in to self-doubt, boredom or even the ever-present temptation to simply do something — as if this were a discipline where results are determined by activity or effort, rather than by just being right. It’s a formidable challenge, but whenever I feel my resolve start to weaken, I need only think back to my memories of my grandfather for inspiration.”
Today, O’Connor still keeps Buffett’s September 2000 letter next to his desk, describing it as his “favorite piece of Buffett memorabilia.” He feels that he would be lucky to be working for the same people 35 or 40 years later.
“What better reminder could there be of what this ‘job’ is all about?” O’Connor wrote. “It’s not about image or status or making myself rich. Rather, it’s entirely about serving others, and making them wealthy enough to make a material difference in the same way the Buffett LP’s (and Berkshire Hathaway) did for mine. In other words, it’s about the chance to have a real, even transformational impact on their lives — not just today or tomorrow, but over decades.”
Get the full Hidden Value Stocks Q3 2025 Special Edition here.
