Transcript
The pitch
The fund manager. Good evening, and thank you for your discretion. This is Affair Rally Capital. We buy the scandal, and we hold through the divorce.
The client. Sorry. You buy what?
The fund manager. When a tech chief's private life goes public, we buy the stock. We read the gossip pages as a term sheet.
The analyst. Our flagship position is Alphabet. Since the night Sergey Brin's marriage made the news, on the 28th of August, 2013, it is up 1,282 percent.
The client. Because of the affair?
The fund manager. The market does not care where the chief executive slept. It cares whether the servers stay up, the trucks leave on time, and the board can read its statement without crying.
Compliance. For the record, I would like it noted that I did not write that sentence.
The fund manager. Noted. So when the tabloids find a second phone, we do not sell. We buy. Then we wait for the lawyers, the settlement, the apology email, and a stock chart that never once looked back.
Investment thesis
The analyst. The thesis has four parts. One. The affair is not news. The stock is.
The fund manager. Brin's split was reported after the market closed. Alphabet has since grown nearly fourteen-fold. The marriage did not.
The analyst. Two. Full confidence is a buy signal.
The fund manager. When a board says it has full confidence in its chief executive, it means one thing. Do not sell. We take boards at their word. It is the only part of the story where anyone does.
The analyst. Three. The divorce is a liquidity event.
The client. That sounds expensive.
The fund manager. MacKenzie Scott left the Bezos marriage with about four percent of Amazon, roughly 36 billion dollars at the time. Amazon did not notice. It is up 221 percent since the divorce was announced.
Compliance. She has since given away billions of dollars, which is the most responsible thing anyone in this fund has ever done.
The analyst. Four. Distraction is priced in. The company has tens of thousands of engineers. Only one of them was distracted.
Fund performance
The analyst. Fund performance. Ten thousand dollars into each position, bought at the close on the day the story broke.
The client. And?
The analyst. Seventy thousand dollars in. Three hundred thousand, three hundred and ten dollars out.
The fund manager. Alphabet turned ten thousand into 138 thousand. Oracle, almost 53 thousand. Amazon, 32 thousand.
Compliance. These are real closing prices, adjusted for stock splits, price return only, up to the 11th of November, 2026.
The fund manager. Everything else is the champagne.
Holdings
The analyst. The holdings. Alphabet, bought on the 28th of August, 2013. The catalyst: Brin's separation from Anne Wojcicki, and reports of a new relationship with a marketing manager on Google Glass.
The client. Was Brin the chief executive?
The fund manager. He was not. Larry Page was. We do not discriminate by title. Rating: strong buy. The glasses failed. The stock did not.
The analyst. Amazon, bought on the 9th of January, 2019, the day the Bezos divorce was announced. Within a day, a tabloid was printing his text messages.
The fund manager. Rating: strong buy. He kept seventy-five percent of the shares, and all of the rocket company.
The analyst. Microsoft, bought on the 3rd of May, 2021, when the Gates divorce was announced. Two weeks later, reports said the board had investigated a relationship with an employee from twenty years earlier.
Compliance. He had already left the board, in March 2020.
The fund manager. We bought the building anyway. Rating: hold. Windows still opens.
The analyst. Then the pair trade. On the 24th of July, 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported a brief affair between Elon Musk and Sergey Brin's then wife. Musk denied it, in stronger words than these.
The fund manager. One rumour, two positions. Tesla is up 46 percent since. Alphabet, again, up 173 percent.
The client. Brin is in the fund twice?
The fund manager. Loyalty is rewarded.
We followed the talent
The fund manager. We followed the talent.
The analyst. In August 2010, HP's board forced out its chief executive, Mark Hurd. An investigation into a contractor's complaint found no harassment violation. It did find he had broken the company's conduct rules, including inaccurate expense reports.
The fund manager. Larry Ellison wrote to the New York Times that the HP board had just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs.
The analyst. A month later, Oracle hired Hurd as co-president.
The client. And how did that work out?
The analyst. HP kept its principles. HP is up 50 percent since. Oracle kept the man. Oracle is up 429 percent.
Compliance. Correlation is not causation.
The fund manager. Correlation is not causation. It is, however, a brochure.
The board expresses full confidence
The analyst. Board-speak, translated. We have full confidence in our chief executive.
The fund manager. Do not sell.
The analyst. We have launched an independent review.
The fund manager. Do not sell yet.
The analyst. A consensual relationship with an employee.
The fund manager. We found the emails.
The analyst. We are taking legal action to recover compensation.
The fund manager. There were more emails.
Compliance. Which brings us to McDonald's. In November 2019 its board fired Steve Easterbrook over a consensual relationship with an employee, and let him leave with his severance.
The analyst. The next year it found more, and sued. In December 2021 he agreed to return about 105 million dollars. In 2023 the Securities and Exchange Commission fined him 400 thousand dollars for misleading investors about how he left.
The client. And the stock?
The fund manager. Up 46 percent. The only position in the fund where the money came back.
Private markets: the kiss cam premium
The fund manager. Not every opportunity trades.
The analyst. On the 16th of July, 2025, the kiss cam at a Coldplay concert found Astronomer's chief executive with his arm around the company's head of people. They ducked. The stadium filmed it. So did the internet.
Compliance. He resigned three days later. She resigned the following week.
The analyst. The company then hired Gwyneth Paltrow, the singer's ex-wife, as a temporary spokesperson, for a video about data pipelines.
The client. Can we buy it?
The fund manager. Astronomer is private. We could not buy it. We have written to Coldplay asking for the tour dates.
The analyst. Rating: not investable. Extremely watchable.
Watchlist: Nvidia
The fund manager. Which brings us to the watchlist. Nvidia. Position initiated on the 8th of November, 2026.
The analyst. That day, Jensen Huang told his staff, by email: I was unfaithful to my wife.
Compliance. The New York Times reported, citing people briefed on the intelligence, that the woman was a spy for China's Ministry of State Security. China called the allegation a smear.
The fund manager. Our first holding with a foreign institutional investor.
Compliance. Alleged. An alleged foreign institutional investor.
The analyst. The board said it had no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, and that it has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team.
The fund manager. Do not sell.
The analyst. The President said the FBI is looking into it. Three House committee chairs had already asked Huang to brief them by the 18th of November.
The client. And the stock?
The analyst. Down 4.3 percent on Monday, while the market rallied. Down 5.5 percent on Tuesday. On Wednesday, it bounced.
The fund manager. The rally has begun. Rating: accumulate. The chips are still the chips.
Compliance. I have asked whether a honey trap counts as an affair. Legal says yes.
Fees and risk disclosures
Compliance. Fees and risk disclosures. Finally. Management fee: two lawyers. Performance fee: twenty non-disclosure agreements.
The analyst. Past infidelity is no guarantee of future returns.
Compliance. The fund's back-test leaves out Intel. In June 2018, Intel's chief executive resigned over a past consensual relationship with an employee. Intel is up 20 percent since.
The fund manager. Technically a rally.
Compliance. Over the same days, the Nasdaq 100, which has never been caught doing anything, did better than the fund.
The fund manager. The benchmark has been asked to step down, pending a review of its private life.
Compliance. The prices are real. The fund is not. Do not try to buy it. Investors may lose some or all of their marriage.
Next position
The fund manager. This last frame is empty. It is reserved for the next chief executive.
The client. Who?
The fund manager. We do not know. We only know the board will have full confidence.
The analyst. Every source for this is listed at the end of the page, and every one of them is linked.
Compliance. If something here is wrong, it is wrong in the record, and we would want to know. The corrections address is in the footer.
The fund manager. This was Affair Rally Capital. A Feline Union publication.