Thematic + 13Fs: Research and replicate the investment portfolios of top hedge fund managers

At Thematic, we work with a variety of customer segments - from multi-billion asset managers to equity research teams. One common challenge we’ve heard is that developing a brand-new investment strategy from scratch, then performing the necessary testing to gain enough conviction, can be daunting and time consuming. That's why many of our customers will sometimes take a page from the playbook of others. By customizing strategies from proven models and approaches, they can leverage the wisdom and experience of trailblazers - and doing so on Thematic makes it easy. Today, we’re introducing new tools to help asset managers leverage our SEC data pipeline to seamlessly and quickly develop, manage, and track 13F-based portfolios.

Building on the Strategies of Hedge Fund Leaders

On a recent call with an asset manager at a large endowment fund, she expressed her desire to implement strategies that mimic those of prominent hedge funds. However, she has to modify the strategies slightly in order to meet her fund’s parameters, and therefore needed Thematic to test these modifications with our instant backtesting and benchmarking capabilities.

To make her life a little easier, we built out the ability to copy the holdings and weights of various hedge funds, based off of their latest 13F filings.

In doing so, the asset manager can now create a benchmark (the original hedge fund) and compare it to her copy with modifications.

Now, with Thematic, this asset manager can fully vet her modifications before implementing this strategy.

Blending Hedge Fund Strategies

A bonus element to this new feature is now you can blend the strategies of hedge funds that you admire. Let’s say you would like to blend the strategies of Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital and Brad Gerstner’s Altimeter Capital. This would (theoretically) create a diversified mix of long term value companies and innovative growth companies.

From the Search section of Thematic’s Builder, you’d select Pershing Square Capital and Altimeter Capital Management, and load their latest holdings into a portfolio.

From here, you can modify and benchmark away.

This is one of those features that looks simple on the surface, but a lot of work was put in behind the scenes to make it feel that way. (If you’ve ever worked with a 13F filing, you know what we mean.) For now, we are only pulling in the latest quarterly 13F filings, and we do not support options. If you are interested in historical filings or options support, please let us know.

We currently support these funds:

• Pershing Capital
• Bridgewater Associates
• Arrowstreet Capital
• Clearbridge Investments
• Altimeter Capital Management
• Tiger Global Management
• Elliott Investment Management
• Ares Management
• Viking Global Investors
• Coatue Management

If there’s a fund or manager you’d like us to add, let us know!

Thanks for using Thematic!