MIT Adds Two New Emerging Managers

At Old Well Labs, we pride ourselves on having the most timely and accurate data on the disclosed manager holdings of leading allocators. Recently, we discovered two newly-disclosed manager relationships for MIT that we believe are not currently shown on any other platforms. Both appear to be representative of MIT’s continued focus on small and emerging managers. This follows last year’s newsletter, where we also shared two new emerging managers backed by MIT, Meditation Capital and Titanite Capital.

Allocator filings are one of several ways to identify promising emerging managers on OWL – users are also able to see new ADV filers, new 13F filers, team change alerts, and our new Recent Launches feed, helping them identify interesting managers before they are discovered by peers.

In Friday’s newsletter OWL Users received details on MIT’s new managers including their AUMs (both sub-$50 million), locations (Florida and Boston), and information on their teams’ backgrounds. Please reach out if you’re interested in learning more about how to use OWL to find interesting new managers!

At this point, most investors have probably seen the drastic change in Avis Budget Group’s share price recently.

There are a number of managers that have benefitted from this jump, however none have likely profited more than SRS. The manager has invested in the stock since 2010 when the share price was around $11.50.

SRS has added to its position at least 13 times with a few trims along the way, culminating in a 17.4 million share position as of 12/31/25. Based on public disclosures of their direct holdings of the shares, we estimate that SRS generated profits of more than $12 billion at the peak of the stock’s rise, and we still estimate their profits to be roughly $4 billion as of Friday after the stock’s fall over the prior few days.

SRS is one of the best performing managers using OWL estimates, coming in at 6^th overall based on estimated 10-year performance, even accounting for Avis’s more recent decline:

But why did Avis rocket up in the first place? It’s not a short (squeeze) answer.

Avis has been a popular stock to short for some time given its 2-year streak of net losses and declining revenue, leading to 54% of the company’s available float being sold short by the end of March, according to Forbes.

Short sellers started to feel some pain as the company benefitted from the TSA shutdown in February and as rising oil prices pushed consumers to drive instead of fly. These dynamics drove the shares up minimally, which was then exacerbated by the short sellers buying shares to hedge their positions.

On the other side of the market, SRS and Pentwater, which recently exercised a large block of options, together hold approximately 71% of Avis’s shares outright. Including synthetic ownership via swaps, the two managers effectively controlled 108% of Avis shares as of the beginning of April, according to Barrons.

This caused panic from shorts as they realized the supply to cover their losses was low, and only getting smaller as the swap dealers also bought shares to hedge.

This self-feeding cycle of the short sellers and swap dealer’s attempts to hedge or cover mounting losses drove the share price higher and higher, pushing Avis to as high as a  500% gain since April 1 at its peak, though the stock is up roughly 35% since April 1, as of market close Thursday.

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.

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. Certain investment managers, funds, or limited partners (“LPs”) referenced herein may be current or prospective clients of Old Well Labs, and Old Well Labs may have business relationships with such parties. Accordingly, references to any manager, fund, or LP should not be construed as an endorsement, recommendation, or solicitation. 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.