BlackBird Financial LP is an investment partnership founded by Judah Spinner, CFA. The firm is modeled on the Buffett Partnerships of the 1950's.
Our mission is to generate long-term returns that outperform the market net of all fees, while minimizing the chance of permanent loss of capital.
We are guided by the classic tenets of value investing. We believe that the market price of a security does not necessarily reflect its intrinsic value.
Our mission is to provide clients with superior risk-adjusted returns, net of all fees, over the long-term.
We strive to do this by exploiting the inefficiencies of an ‘efficient market.’ We have been reaching our goal for more than a decade by identifying publicly traded companies whose market prices meaningfully discount their intrinsic value.
We aim to identify and research companies with solid balance sheets and the ability to generate significant amounts of free cash flow; and yet are misunderstood, neglected, or just out-of-favor with Wall Street.
A stock is not a piece of paper that one buys and sells in the hopes of making a buck. A stock represents a fractional ownership of a real business. When we purchase shares of a company's stock, we literally become owners of a fractional share of that entire business. Within that framework, our analysis is fervently focused on understanding the underlying economics and practical operations of that business in the same way a business owner would.
A small business owner does not check the value of their company on a daily basis, nor does a homeowner check the daily price fluctuation of their home. Much the same, we only pay attention to daily price fluctuations for the opportunity they might provide and we frame our analysis of quarterly results within the context of how will it affect the normalized earning power of the business over the next 3 to 5 years.
Opportunity comes to the prepared mind. We spend the vast majority of our time reading ValueLine reports, 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and other business publications. By studying thousands of businesses, we are well positioned to recognize a great opportunity when finally presents itself and be ready to act accordingly. In most cases, by the time we make an investment, we have already been following the company for many years.
Warren Buffett once proposed a thought experiment: imagine each investor receives a punchcard with only twenty slots upon entering the market—one punch per investment, for life. The constraint would compel deep deliberation before every commitment. We embrace this discipline. By limiting ourselves to only our highest-conviction ideas, we ensure that each position reflects genuine insight rather than marginal opportunity. Focus, we believe, is the key to maximizing potential—in life and in investing.
We decline hundreds of ideas each year—including many that are objectively attractive. Every dollar allocated to our tenth-best idea is a dollar withheld from our best. While broad diversification remains Wall Street's conventional wisdom, we find it ill-suited to the professional investor capable of rigorous business analysis. We share Charlie Munger's view that excessive diversification is simply "diworsification"—diluting returns in the name of false comfort. We typically hold no more than a dozen positions in our portfolio at a time.
Intelligence matters in investing, but temperament matters equally. What separates successful investors from the rest is not analytical horsepower alone—it is the capacity to let facts and reasoning, rather than emotion, dictate decisions. Markets are governed by cycles of fear and greed; prices often reflect panic or euphoria more than underlying value. In such an environment, the disciplined investor who remains clearheaded while others succumb to emotion holds an enormous advantage. We strive to be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.
We believe true partnership begins with genuine alignment of interests. We invest alongside our partners, so when we succeed, our partners succeed—and just as importantly, when outcomes fall short, we share fully in those results. In that spirit, Judah Spinner, CFA, our Founder, has more than 90% of his net worth invested in BlackBird.
This level of personal commitment ensures a direct and enduring alignment between Mr. Spinner and the clients who have entrusted us with their hard-earned capital. Our incentive structure is deliberately designed so that our decisions reflect the same care, discipline, and long-term perspective we apply to our own capital. We quite literally eat our own cooking.
