I'm happy to post this, but with the caveait that I'm almost completely in Index Funds. The one place I occasionally see an opportunity is if an activist investor gets on to a mid or small cap company and vets out some significant under performance.
Sardar Bilargi started a proxy fight with Cracker Barrel in 2011 or 2012. I started buying CBRL stock in 2012 in the upper $50s/share and bought it as it ran up to over $100. Its now sitting at $162/share and pays almost $8/share annually including a special dividend paid in the last three years. The dividend is about a 15% annual return on my basis and the shares have appreciated almost 300% in 5.5 years.
This rose to be a pretty concentrated position, so I've slowly sold some off and funded my DAF with some shares, but thats my best winner.
Unfortunately I had a lot of individual stocks that trailed the market recently and my long-term returns reverted to the median. I do think activist investing is the one place where investors will be able to beat the market if they follow the right activists. The problem for me is that sounds too much like work right now.
