There is no management fee. We only accept payment for performance. Our performance fee is allocated on an annual basis and only if we produce a profit above a hurdle rate of 6%. This fee is 25% of the profits above the hurdle rate and must further be above any previous high-water mark. As an example, if the fund earns 26%, we earn 5% and the investor earns 21%, unless there was a loss in the previous year, in which case our earnings would be reduced.
You must be qualified as an accredited investor to subscribe. The minimum required subscription amount is $200,000 committed for a lock-up period of one full year. Subsequent amounts of at least $25,000 may be added at the start of any month. Withdrawals may be taken at the start of a quarter after providing 30-day’s notice.
Fieldsong’s core strategy was developed in late 2015 by our portfolio manager, Yuval Taylor. For the eight years through 2023, before deciding to launch the fund, his annualized return was 46%, with no negative returns in any of those calendar years.
We launched in May 2024 and our 2025 return was 57.61%. Overall, our CAGR is 23.95%, our Sharpe ratio is 1.06, and our beta is 0.47.
Yes. We have a feeder fund based in the British Virgin Islands that exists specifically to serve the needs of off-shore or U.S. retirement account investors.
We wanted to significantly increase the amount of money we could donate to charitable organizations. In addition, many of our friends and associates wanted us to manage their money.
We use multifactor ranking systems. Some of the factors, such as earnings yield, are commonly used. But others have an edge. We are always developing novel factors. We use a lot of factors that favor either middling (not too high or low) or stable (unchanging) values. We do an exhaustive amount of research and development. One key reason for this is that factors often don’t work on their own: they must be considered in combination. Ranking enables us to consider hundreds of factors at once. By varying the weights of factors, we can emphasize certain factors over others in accordance with their tested merit.
Fieldsong’s innovative multifactor ranking approach favors stocks that are likely to be:
Fieldsong’s investment approach inevitably identifies some stocks that become dramatic performers. But this is a byproduct of our bread-and-butter efforts to find stocks that will appreciate enough to give us a smooth but powerful boost. A 10% increase in two months is more profitable than a 70% increase in a year. (Why? Because, due to the magic of compounding, if you make 10% every two months, your end-of-year return will be 77%.)
We find that picking the stock most likely to win is less important than picking stocks that are most likely to beat the odds, that is, picking underappreciated stocks that are overlooked in some regard and have the greatest chance of doing better than the expectations built into their price. This requires taking a rigorous probabilistic approach and evaluating prospects from every possible perspective. Every choice we make is focused on maximizing the probability of an excellent outcome rather than gambling on an optimal one. There is no such thing as a magic formula to investing – it takes hard work and research, research, research.
The stock market is not efficient so we don’t have to. Why not? Because stock prices are driven most often by human behavioral quirks rather than sound financial sense. The reason price movements are so difficult to predict is not because they reflect all known information, as many academics claim, but because prices are the product of thousands of small overreactions, unfulfilled expectations, and misguided second guesses. This is where the savvy investor gets an advantage. By looking at the general principles behind this machine, it’s possible to see through all the smoke, hear through all the noise, and get a reasonable bead on what certain stocks are doing and what they’re likely to do in the future. Savvy investors realize that the market isn’t the well-oiled machine it’s made out to be: it’s one of the craziest games around.
Most writers on risk believe that you cannot increase your reward without taking on more risk. Fieldsong takes a different view. By taking on less risk—by switching from highly risky investments to more dependable ones—you’ll be amply rewarded without relying on extreme luck. By evaluating every investment from as many angles as possible, you both reduce your risk and increase your reward.
Our administrator, brokerage, portfolio custodian, and bank all take a proactive stance on security. Besides a password, our bank accounts can only be accessed by using a personal continuously changing key as the second authentication factor, and our administrator requires verbal confirmation of all written transaction requests. Access to fund records is controlled through two-factor logins and no shareholder records are sent via e-mail. Our broker, StoneX, has an excellent track record with the SEC. Our marketing efforts are tightly focused and our website is very unlikely to be a target for botnets.
We sell short stocks deemed likely to collapse. We also use a futures-based currency hedge and a derivatives-based hedge that makes money when safe stocks underperform and risky stocks outperform.
Fieldsong’s investing is 100% systematic. All factors, whatever their source, are qualified for their effectiveness and assigned weights in the ranking systems through an impartial test and verification process.
We have set a maximum fund capacity of $150M, and will not accept new investments after we reach $80M. Yuval Taylor scaled up his personal accounts from $150,000 to $8,000,000 during the 2016–2023 period. During this time, he did not experience a diminution in performance; on the contrary, he saw his outperformance over the market actually improve modestly.
No. The system does undergo a measured amount of evolutionary progress, driven by our continuous research into new factors and market processes. A significant part of Fieldsong’s success has been that it doesn’t rely on a completely static, frozen formula but that judgment is carefully applied to leverage the success of its underlying framework by incorporating new discoveries and fine-tuning performance. It’s not about buying the fastest car, it’s about having the savviest and most alert driver.