Tantallon Fund Report, 
December 2024

The fund retreated -16.2% and we close the year +69.7%.

With hindsight I should have gone to cash at the end of November. The decision to run our winners, albeit with a trimmed long book and substantial increase in our index hedges, was, bluntly, dumb. Bloom was reduced by a third, Ivanhoe exited yet again (what a disappointment copper has proved to be in 2024), together with Nuscale, Reddit while SiTime and TSMC were trimmed. Our index hedges, predominantly in Russell 2000, S+P and DAX however proved only marginally additive (+1.3%), with gains in our US hedges being substantially offset by losses in Japan, Hong Kong and Germany. Short equity positions, the largest of which are in the Australian banks and iron ore plays, contributed +2.6%, offset to a lesser extent by strength in Japanese cosmetic and auto names. These were partly predicated on the BoJ following through with a December hike, but Ueda proved pusillanimous, the hawkishness which surprised the market earlier has disappeared, leaving the JPY sharply weaker, costing us -2.3%.