- Saiga Capital, a young hedge fund with less than $10 million, has been one of the unlikely winners so far in the coronavirus pandemic — the video-game-focused manager is up nearly 25% through May.
- The fund, which was launched in January of last year, only lost 0.3% in March, when markets plummeted worldwide due to global economies shutting down.
- The fund is a part of the extended family tree stemming from Tiger Management founder Julian Robertson. Founder Brian Oh worked at Saola Capital Management, a spin-off of Kylin Capital, prior to starting his own firm, and senior advisor John Jhang was at Tiger Asia for nearly a decade.
- "As far as we know, there's not another fund that does what we do," said Oh, the founder of the fund.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Every month, Brian Oh tries out new video games — at least 10 on his phone and another four on a console like an Xbox or a Playstation. The difference between him and the millions of video-game-obsessed people across the world is he is doing it for work.
Oh is the founder of Saiga Capital, a small hedge fund that claims to be the only manager that focuses solely on the video-game industry.
"As far as we know, there's not another fund that does what we do," Oh said in an interview with Business Insider.
His expertise is paying off — Saiga has been one of the winners in the coronavirus pandemic, losing only 0.3% in March when markets crashed and making money every other month. As of the end of May, the fund is up 24.4% after making 35.7% last year.
In comparison, the average hedge fund has lost about 3.7% through the same five-month period. The video-game industry has been strong throughout the year — gaming-only ETF GAMR has made more than 19% through the end of May.
"COVID-19 has been a net positive for the gaming industry," Oh said. Video games, he said, are the most cost-effective home-entertainment source out there, and the pandemic brought an explosion in sales for games like Nintendo's Animal Crossing. Some of the firm's biggest positions include Japanese company Nextgen and Korean company Gravity. 
While the markets have appeared to fallen in and pushed out of a recession in record time, Oh believes video games can thrive in either environment. He noted that video-game consumption even increased after the financial crisis.
"When people are depressed, they want entertainment to remove that stress," he said.
The fund manages less than $10 million currently, but Oh said they are discussions with investors, including an endowment. The fund has a soft cap of $200 million, he said, as the combined market cap of the investable universe is around $1.5 trillion.
The team running Saiga — a four-person team, including Oh — has serious pedigrees. Oh is a part of the extended Tiger Management family tree, working at Kylin Management spin-off Saola Capital Management for two years. John Jhang, the firm's senior advisor, was a managing director at Tiger Asia, and analyst Kevin Liu covered China's telecommunications, media, and technology scene for Saola. The firm's tech advisor Dae Kim was previously a quant for Merrill Lynch.
But the experience that the firm boasts of, before their Tiger ties, in letters to investors is the decades they've collectively been playing video games: more than 50 years, from "when Nintendo launched 1st gen. console."
Oh said he's followed Warren Buffett's advice to invest in what you know.
"Video games have been my hobby since the beginning, and I still play," he said.
Read more:
- Hedge funds are in uncharted waters right now. Here's how 12 billionaires like Ray Dalio, Ken Griffin, and Seth Klarman survived the last time the world fell apart.
- Investors' usual way of valuing companies is under scrutiny— and it could mean the end of the unprofitable unicorns that dominated in the last decade
- For more stories like this, sign up here for our Wall Street Insider newsletter
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak