This guy beat the market for 17 straight years trading a sector many investors have written off post-2008
Derek Pilecki (@gatorcapital) runs a financials-only fund. 21%+ annualized.
His edge? A corner of the market many investors moved away from after the GFC.
We cover:
- Why he expanded from 25 → 40 positions and returns went UP
- His counterintuitive rule: buy higher, not lower (positions get LESS risky as they rise)
- The Robinhood call — bought late 2023, rode it to a multibagger
- Why he's quietly watching FactSet, Morningstar & Verisk right now
- His view on private credit risk (and why he disagrees with Jamie Dimon)
- How he uses AI to analyze more stocks without losing his edge
- Why markets chronically underreact to good news — and how to exploit it
- The brutal career reality no one tells young PMs about
Highlights:
00:00 Intro
01:06 Derek's +21% annualized return track record
02:50 Fundamental business change vs market noise in Robinhood
05:25 Portfolio construction: Concentration limits and adding to winners
09:09 Sourcing alpha and identifying three-year doubles in financials
12:44 Developing edge through repetition and management team cycles
14:16 Why the post-GFC regime fundamentally changed bank underwriting
17:07 Assessing tail risk and leverage in the private credit market
21:23 AI-driven market dispersion and identifying moaty businesses
24:11 Why shareholder base turnover matters for timing broken charts
29:37 Integrating AI into fundamental research and SEC filing analysis
35:39 Risk management: Permanent capital loss vs mark-to-market volatility
37:12 Capacity constraints: Optimizing for returns over AUM scale
50:39 Career risk and the reality of active money management
Neurofacto:
En el TOC no hay “obsesión por el control”, sino un cerebro atrapado en piloto automático. Los circuitos que deberían decidir conscientemente (corteza prefrontal) ceden el mando a los que repiten hábitos (núcleo caudado). Así, el cerebro sabe que ya cerró la puerta… pero su sistema automático no se da por enterado. En el TOC, el problema no es pensar demasiado, sino que el hábito gana la guerra contra la intención.
IV IRON AND FERRITIN
1/8
I recently posted a question about the spike in serum ferritin after IV iron.
It can shoot from <10 to >1000, yet transferrin saturation (TSAT) only rises to normal — it barely moves.
What’s going on?
This is macrophage physiology in action 👇