Whitney Tilson Has Nearly 30% of His Fund in Fucking Call Options!

For all the totally inexplicable facetime T2’s Whitney Tilson gets on prime time financial comedy air, one would imagine that the man runs billions and billions. Instead, as per the just released 13F, Tilson’s fund has a grand total of $345MM in long AUM as of March 31. So far so good, however that does not explain why the manager has a Sharpe ratio of roughly 0.00 in the past 3 years. Well, now we know: of the $345 MM total, a ridiculous $104 Million is in call options! In other words, not only is Tilson nothing but a bullish bet that copycats various other select hedge fund portfolios, it is a mega-levered one at that, with what appears ridiculously high theta! It get’s worse: as it turns out, another $24MM or so is… in Warrants. Yup: all levered products without actually owning the underlying, leading to massive monthly swings in actual P&L. In other words, real assets held by Tilson amount to $217 Million. And one wonders why the fund can be up 20% one month and down 30% the next… or how Tilson can spend hours a day on TV.

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UPDATE: It’s been pointed out to me that Tilson most likely doesn’t have 30% of his fund in calls. The source might have gotten confused about how options are reported to the SEC. 10,000 apologies to Lord Tilson.

UPDATE II: ZH is insisting he is correct. I don’t give a shit at this point. Take it for what it’s worth. Tilson is a God damned idiot.