What fuels the curiosity and drive to become a great investor? Could it be early teenage stock market experiments that return 20% or simply being bored in the UK’s equivalent of Iowa, allowing you to take deeper dives into company annual reports during summer breaks? Edgar Allen began his own investment career, fueled by these experiences, as well as through his studies as a budding pathologist. However, as many allocators experience coming out of the university system, a career change to finance was calling, which Fidelity Investments helped him realize.
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In this episode of Thematic Investors, we welcome Edgar Allen, CIO and Founder, High Ground Investment Management. Edgar runs a long-short equity fund focused on European investing (this builds on past Thematic’s Investor podcasts with Johnny de la Hey and Stuart Mitchell – so be sure to check those out as well).

Edgar and Kieran discuss value investing and how players can approach some of these counter trends across the market.

Key Takeaways:

• How being assigned the most random group of companies to analyze at the start of his investment career led to larger groupings of well-known names, and into hedge fund investing.
• How you begin to balance investment targets by buying low and selling high, against something that is fundamentally cheap, and how much the market has mispriced the asset’s terminal value.
• What does competition mean in short-selling when the target has a really good product or service?
• How do Europe and the US differ in terms of return profiles on investment, dividends, valuations, and why there might be greater advantages in European companies than US peers?
• What does European defense spending mean for the team at High Ground Investment Management when they look at valuations and durations?
• Why is it important to Edgar to go beyond pure spreadsheet numbers on investment targets to understand more about what a company does and why customers are willing to pay for the product and service that they receive?
• How investing ideas can be aligned with the fall of Carthage, as well as the three-age system.
• And more!

Connect with Kieran Cavanna:

• Old Farm Partners
• LinkedIn: Kieran Cavanna

Connect with Edgar Allen:

• LinkedIn: Edgar Allen
• Website: High Ground Investment Management LLP

About Edgar Allen:

Edgar Allen is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of High Ground Investment Management, based in London. Prior to establishing High Ground, he worked at The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI), Fidelity, and BlackRock. Edgar brings over 25 years of investment experience and focuses on European equities through a long-short strategy that combines deep fundamental analysis with disciplined valuation and risk control.

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Throughout many of our past episodes on the Thematic Investors podcast, we have seen the differences in hedge fund investing strategies when East meets West. Given today’s trade and tariff environment, we wanted to expand the debate with two leading macro investors, pulling their insights on tariffs, U.S. exceptionalism, capital expenditures in areas like AI, and more.

We are honored to welcome Ronnie Roy, Founder and CEO of RV Capital, and Zach Kurz, Founder and CIO of PinnBrook Capital. In this episode, host Kieran Cavanna discusses the following topics with Ronnie and Zach:

• What makes mapping the scavenger hunt of macro trends so exciting to these hedge fund investors today?
• For Zach, how did a Sunday discussion with Stanley Druckenmiller influence the future of his investing strategies?
• For Ronnie, how was he able to ride the wave of volatility by creating interest rate products during times of crisis?
• What do each of these investors believe about global tariffs, and why a recession never fully materialized, as reported earlier in 2025?
• Given the speed and complexity of AI, how are AI goals impacting macro hedge fund strategies and the CapEx story? What could labor market risks look like in 6-8 months?
• How will President Trump’s policies play out for the remainder of the year as it relates to China, Korea, India, and Japan?
• And more.

Connect with Kieran Cavanna:

• Old Farm Partners
• LinkedIn: Kieran Cavanna

Connect with Zach Kurz:

• LinkedIn: Zach Kurz
• Website: PinnBrook Capital

Connect with Ronnie Roy:

• LinkedIn: Ronnie Roy
• Website: RV Capital

About Zach Kurz:

Zach Kurz is the portfolio manager of PinnBrook Capital, a New York–based macro firm managing roughly $600 million in its macro strategy. His path runs from Princeton (economics and applied math) to an early stint at Morgan Stanley, then to Duquesne Capital under Stan Druckenmiller, where he absorbed a liquidity-first view of global markets. He helped launch PointState Capital in 2011, building out the macro business, and in 2020 started his own firm. Today, his approach blends macro with thematic equity investing grounded in that training.

About Ronnie Roy:

Ronnie Roy is the co-founder and portfolio manager of RV Capital in Singapore, an Asia-centric macro firm specializing in rates, FX, and credit that was launched in 2011 and now operates with a global footprint. After years in large institutions, he set out to manage his own capital and then external capital, drawing on a career spent across fixed income markets and co-founding RV. He started on India’s government bond desk in the early 1990s and went on to trade through major dislocations, including the Asian crisis and the LTCM collapse, experiences that shaped his risk framework and macro lens.

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Investing in healthcare and biotech requires razor-sharp models, especially if you want to create more opportunities in this category through short selling. In today’s market, how can investors capitalize on short opportunities when AI, external Medicare Service pressure, policy regulation, and other factors are impacting healthcare investment targets and potentially derailing performance returns?

In our latest episode of the Thematic Investors podcast, we sit down with one of the great under-the-radar investors who has taken $3MM in AUM and has built it into a $1 BN firm. Join us in welcoming Dr. Michael Castor, CIO and Portfolio Manager, Sio Capital Management. Kieran and Michael discuss:

• What exactly turned him from an ENT resident into a career in finance.
  
• How the short-selling models at SIO Capital Management take a deep look at 4 critical aspects in the investment journey: Valuation, Catalysts, Sentiment, and Investment Narrative.
  
• Do Biotech investment targets simply go bankrupt, with investors holding the bag for returns that never materialize? Or is something else going on across the sector.
  
• With 17% of the U.S. GDP and 10% global GDP, where is healthcare headed, and what type of external forces are at play in driving efficiency?
  
• How will the U.S. administration balance drug prices, especially those that are significantly in the spotlight today like, Manjaro, Ozempic, and others?
  
• Has the bar on scientific assessment been lowered too far over the last few years, and can the drag on the healthcare system be reversed at this stage?
  
• The impact of AI and how new doctors will need to adjust their approaches in the next 5-10 years.
  
• and more.

Connect with Michael Castor:

• LinkedIn: Michael Castor
• Sio Capital Management LLC

Connect with Kieran Cavanna:

• Old Farm Partners
• LinkedIn: Kieran Cavanna

About Our Guest:

Michael founded Sio Capital Management in 2006 and has served as the portfolio manager since the Firm’s inception. Before starting Sio, Michael worked at Bernstein Investment Research and Management from October 2001 to February 2006 as Bernstein’s healthcare analyst. Michael was responsible for covering all sectors of healthcare globally. In addition to evaluating long investments, he identified healthcare short investments for several of Bernstein’s hedge funds. When Bernstein launched sector portfolios (an internal Bernstein product launched in 2003), Michael served as the healthcare sector leader.

Prior to Bernstein, Michael worked in the investment banking/equity capital markets division of JP Morgan, where he focused on biotechnology and healthcare equity offerings.

Before entering finance, Michael spent three years in clinical medicine. He completed his surgery internship at Indiana University Medical Center, followed by two years of surgery and otolaryngology residency at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. Michael earned a MD from The Ohio State University College of Medicine, where he graduated summa cum laude. He earned his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from Tulane University where he graduated summa cum laude with departmental honors.

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