October 2026 Recap

The disclosed holdings of managers in OWL’s Europe group performed the best in October, closely followed by OWL’s Energy & Cyclicals and Quality groups. The majority of the OWL groups declined in October, most notably China and Brazil. 

As a reminder, the table below is based on our “OWL Groups” – curated lists of over 500 managers focused on public equity markets. All returns shown are estimates based on publicly disclosed holdings. OWL users can use the OWL Groups Homepage to see more detailed manager lists across asset classes.

In Friday’s newsletter, users received a list of the best and worst performing managers in October. Many of the names in this month’s bottom 20 also appeared in previous monthly recaps – 14 of these also appeared in September’s top 20 performers, and 10 of them also appeared in July’s 20 worst performers given the volatility of AI names this year.

This week, we’re digging into some OWL data around AI stocks and their impact on managers’ performance in October. Below is a scatter plot of October estimated returns versus weight in AI stocks for more than 1,000 OWL managers, with select managers highlighted:

We also estimated how much of a manager’s October estimated return was due to its AI holdings versus its non-AI holdings. In Friday’s newsletter, users received a list of a select group of the best- and worst-performing managers in October with this breakdown included.

We are also excited to share a new feature added to OWL recently – managers’ Estimated Returns pages have a new Contribution tab where users can see how individual holdings affected that manager’s performance over multiple timeframes. As an example, below users can see which stocks have contributed the most and least for Situational Awareness since the start of Q4:

For each of Situational Awareness’s positions, users can dig deeper into the position’s impact on returns:

We also added the same type of analysis on each stock page, showing which managers were impacted the most by the stock’s performance over a given time frame, as well as a conviction vs. payoff analysis. Below is an example of what users can see on Sandisk’s contribution tab for the last 12 months:

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.