Q&A with Sharesight partner Fiftyone Capital

We talked with Scott Williams, founder and CEO/CIO of hedge fund Fiftyone Capital about how he uses Sharesight for his personal investments, and how his clients benefit from being able to track the fund on Sharesight along with the rest of their investments.

Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get into investing?

I first got into investing prior to my first job as a stockbroker, which I started around 2010. That’s when I really started to understand the need for detailed reporting. I worked as a stockbroker for 6 years before starting Fiftyone Capital, which is a global long-short hedge fund where we pool our clients’ funds and invest across the developed world.

Tell us about Fiftyone Capital and your role at the company.

I’m the founder, CEO and CIO (Chief Investment Officer) of the fund. My daily role is to manage the investment portfolio and investment team. It’s a very rewarding industry and I'm passionate about offering clients a great new product. We’ve also been growing a great team and we continue to expand as more new investors co-invest with us.

How would you define your fund’s investment philosophy/strategy?

We look to preserve capital as our first and foremost goal, and then seek to generate double-digit returns by finding asymmetric investment opportunities across the developed world. The way we think about investing is that we like to buy value (great businesses at attractive valuations), while reducing our risk in holding these positions through periods of elevated market volatility by short-selling or betting against businesses we think are fundamentally impaired or have negative catalysts. We typically like to have a margin of safety, or positions where we feel the risk/reward is skewed asymmetrically in our favour.

Why did you choose to use Sharesight?

We use it a lot with our personal investments and have done for many years. Price data for our fund is also available in Sharesight with an APIR code (WAC3695AU - Progressive Global Fund). So for our clients using it, if they want to track the investments in their overall portfolio we normally suggest that they use Sharesight so they can see what the value of our fund is each month, as well as the value of the other assets they hold. And each client is different – some people prefer to see attribution reports, whereas others use it for tax. It can definitely be very helpful at tax time.

Which Sharesight feature do you find the most useful?

Personally my favourite feature is the ability to share your portfolio. I like that I can share my portfolios with my accountant, bookkeeper, or anyone. They get a really clear picture of what’s been happening without having to keep contacting me, asking me what happened here or there. It’s a very good way to keep records in general.

I’m also in an investment club with my friends and we share a Sharesight portfolio that is viewable by everyone so we can all see how our investments are performing. We all put in $10,000 for a $100,000 portfolio quite a few years ago. There is a set person that does the investments and we all vote on it. We use Sharesight to see the cash balance from the bank account, what the investments are doing, how they’ve performed and keep track of everything. Then we meet on a monthly basis to discuss the investments and any new ideas. It really makes the whole club a lot of fun and very transparent with the investments.

FURTHER READING

• Blog - 7 reasons Sharesight is better than a Spreadsheet
• Blog - Why the right partners matter
• Blog - Q&A with personal finance author Baubre Murray