September 2026 Recap

The disclosed holdings of managers in OWL’s Japan group performed the best in September. Managers in OWL’s Brazil and China groups produced the only other positive performance in September, while Biotech, Europe, and Energy and Cyclicals declined more than 7%.

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.

As mentioned in last month’s recap, we recently refreshed the OWL Groups Homepage to better showcase the variety of managers that can be tracked in OWL, and give users more detailed manager lists across asset classes. As a part of this refresh, we have also added curated Allocator groups, and users can create their own customized Allocator groups as well.

In Friday’s newsletter, users received a list of some of the best and worst performers in September. One of the month’s top performers was Blue Water Life Science Advisors, a Larkspur, California-based biotech hedge fund with $193 million in regulatory AUM.

Disclosed LPs include the S&G Foundation and the Shelter Hill Foundation. The S&G Foundation is associated with Shelby M. C. Davis, founder of Davis Selected Advisers, a $30 billion investment firm.

Blue Water was founded in 2017 by Nate Cornell, a former analyst at Pacific Growth Equities who went on to serve as director of research at Private Wealth Partners before starting Blue Water.

The fund currently discloses nine public positions with a total market value of $256 million:

Blue Water’s biggest disclosed winner is Personalis, which has generated an estimated 188% return on invested capital, according to OWL’s Batting Average chart. Based in Fremont, California, Personalis is a cancer genomics and genetic testing company that specializes in advanced tumor profiling and minimal residual disease monitoring.

Blue Water began building its position in Q3 2024 and added at least three more times through Q2 2025 while the share price ranged from $3.50 to $6.50. Shares closed at $16.28 as of 9/30.

Other disclosed owners of Personalis include Deep Track and Casdin Capital.

After a rough start to the year, Blue Water has outperformed since May, despite September’s underperformance by other biotech managers. Positions in 10x Genomics, which rose 51% in September, and Quanterix, which gained 48%, contributed to the performance.

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.