Vistra Capital Management Ltd. was founded with the philosophy that an active, opportunistic and flexible approach to investing will enable us to generate long-term positive returns for our clients across a variety of market environments.

We believe that simple buy and hold strategies can lead to extended losses in bear markets, or to little progress in range-bound markets. Traditional investment managers are not flexible and they are usually subject to very strict investment mandates which limit opportunity and can actually increase risk. Our philosophy allows us the freedom to seek out, and respond to, a variety of opportunities.

Our flexible approach allows us to be open to a multitude of opportunities as they arise and, importantly, it allows us to use a variety of techniques to not only enhance returns, but to minimize risk. The use of options and short-selling securities are commonly perceived as risk-enhancing techniques, when in fact utilizing certain strategies with these techniques can also mitigate, or hedge, risk. Many traditional investment managers operate under strict investment guidelines that do not allow them to use these techniques.

We utilize a bottom-up approach and focus primarily on event driven situations, undervalued securities and special situations. Our investment ideas come from many sources, including, an extensive network of industry and company contacts, internal and street research, and through the ~120 meetings we hold with various management teams each year. We look for investment opportunities where we can clearly identify an expected catalyst, or event, that will generate a change in a security’s price.

We invest in securities and situations that we can understand, and we avoid those we don’t. Our goal is to generate positive returns by concentrating on investments in which we have a high degree of conviction, and to minimize losses by quickly exiting investments or themes which are not playing out as expected.

When the facts change, we are flexible enough to do so as well.