This fund manager up 97% this year thanks to an under-the-radar stock is B-17 investor of the month for October

Earlier this year, we started highlighting some of the top-performing fund managers each month as a way to highlight money managers delivering impressive returns who might be flying under the radar.

Narrowing selections isn’t the easiest task. Do you consider all funds, even those leveraged for outsized returns? What about funds listed outside the US, which most readers don’t have access to anyway? What if a fund is up big in a particular month but performing just average over the last year and even worse over a longer time horizon?

These questions resulted in selecting fund managers from a few different categories over the last couple of months, but going forward, we’re to handle things a bit differently. For our investor of the month, we’ll select a fund manager by considering a few different criteria: their fund is listed in the US; their fund outperformed peers in a given month; and their fund is outperforming a benchmark index (in most cases this will be the S&P 500) on a trailing 12-month basis.

Weighing these factors, choosing our investor of the month for October wasn’t difficult.

It’s Peter Doyle, manager of the Kinetics Paradigm Fund (WWNPX), which was up more than 20% in October and 97% year-to-date. Over the last 12 months, it has returned 78%, beating the S&P 500’s 35% gain. Over the longer term, the Paradigm fund’s performance is even more impressive. Since December 1999, it’s up 1,363% versus the S&P 500’s 304%.

Rather surprisingly, Doyle has delivered these returns without the help of Nvidia or other Magnificent Seven stocks. The fund’s top performer has been the Texas Pacific Land Corporation (TPL), a firm that makes money leasing the land it owns in the western part of Texas.

Demand from AI firms looking to build out data centers on the land has pushed up shares of TPL a staggering 148% year-to-date.

“The amount of capital that’s going to be spent to build out data centers and bringing AI and all of the things that are associated with that to fruition needs to be done where there’s cheap energy, cheap electricity, and available real estate, and water,” Doyle told B-17. “I think people are coming to the conclusion, although I think we’re still early in the game, that a big chunk of that is going to take place in the western part of Texas.”

The stock is the Paradigm Fund’s top holding and has soared to a 65% weighting in the fund amid its outperformance, even as Doyle has drastically taken profits and reduced his position by around half. When Doyle opened his position in the stock, its weight in the fund was 8%.

Despite its massive weighting in the fund, Doyle seems extremely confident in the company and said its business model is highly predictable.

“They own very valuable real estate, and I know that that real estate is basically not going anywhere. And I know that people want to build AI data centers, and I know that that’s the most logical place for that to happen in a very significant way,” Doyle told B-17. “If 100% of my net worth were in TPL, I would be sleeping very well. That’s how good I think it is.”

Other top holdings in the fund include the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) at an 8.8% weighting, Brookfield (BRPPF) at 3.3%, and Landbridge (LB) at 3.1%.