January 2026 Recap

January Recap

We saw a wide dispersion in January performance for our OWL groups. Our Energy & Cyclicals and Brazil groups were the standout performers in January, while India had a tough month.

As a reminder, the table below is based on our “OWL Groups” – curated lists of over 500 managers frequently found in leading allocators’ portfolios. These lists are categorized by geography, sector, and style, enabling our users to easily monitor groups of managers and their underlying disclosed holdings. All performance numbers shown are estimates based on publicly disclosed holdings. 

Maple Rock

OWL users received a more detailed table of estimated manager performance in Friday’s newsletter. One strong performer YTD is Maple Rock. Founded by Xavier Majic in 2015, the Toronto-based firm now manages more than $3 billion. Majic founded Maple Rock after several years at Lonestar Capital Management and Passport Capital. Prior to his investment career, Majic spent a decade as a professional hockey player and was captain of the Canadian men’s national hockey team.

Maple Rock has grown steadily over the past 10+ years, due to both steady fundraising and strong performance:

Maple Rock’s recent performance has been driven largely by its bets on AI-adjacent companies including Western Digital (20% of disclosed portfolio), Sandisk (11% of disclosed portfolio) and Seagate (9% of disclosed portfolio). Maple Rock has also benefited from one of the other significant tailwinds in the past year, the strong performance of gold. Equinox Gold, a Canadian mining company, is Maple Rock’s fourth largest position; the stock is up more than 150% over the past 12 months. A recent WSJ article also dives into more detail on Maple Rock’s strategy and performance.

Estimated performance of disclosed long positions

In our recent profile of the Hillman Family Foundations, we noted that they recently added Maple Rock to their public manager roster. The NYC Fire/Police pensions and the Heinz Family Foundation are also disclosed LPs. Additionally, MIT disclosed an investment in a fund described as "MROCK" between 2018-2023 and a significantly smaller investment in "MRUFL" (possibly short for Maple Rock US Fund LP) as of the end of 2024. OWL users can access thousands of LP portfolios, including many leading endowments and foundations, in our allocator database.

As a reminder, OWL’s newsfeed is now searchable, enabling users to see a quick summary of recent events for any manager. In Maple Rock’s case, users can see a number of recent alerts, including the WSJ article mentioned above, business updates (AUM, team size), and position changes (including Japanese short positions).

Our newsfeed now includes details of disciplinary disclosures directly in the feed, using the arrow on the right. In Maple Rock’s case, it was a fairly minimal fine in Norway in 2024:

Other News & Events

• Hedge Funds Are Back on Top After a Long ‘Alpha Winter’

• Flight Deck Capital: The Tiger Grandcub Who Outsmarted the AI Frenzy

• Oil Revenues Transform New Mexico State Investment Council Into Investment Powerhouse

• Why New Holland is raising money in the crowded private credit space

• Arianna Simpson leaving a16z to launch new fund

• Yale’s Famed Investing Model Falters at a Fraught Time for Colleges

• Not All Endowments and Foundations Are All-In on AI

• Citadel Joins Trading Rush Into Metals as Prices Soar to Records

• Citadel CTO Subramanian Steps Down After 7 Years

• MITIMCO Hiring Investor

• UMass Tops Endowment Performance Rankings for 2025

About Old Well Labs

OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.

Disclaimers

Returns represent the return on invested capital of publicly disclosed long positions, as calculated by OWL. Actual returns may vary based on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) undisclosed positions, short exposure, non-equity holdings, cash holdings, and lagged disclosure of positions.

This newsletter and the material on the Old Well Labs platform are for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, manager, or strategy. Old Well Labs shall not be liable for any investment gain or loss that may occur from the use of this material. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or used in any publication without express written permission from Old Well Labs.