Out Fox The $treet

Small Cap Insight To investors frustrated with being locked out of the pre-IPO market, business development corporations (BDC) such as Firsthand Technology Value Fund ( SVVC ) offered potential for participating in the large IPO gains of hot stocks. The reality hasn't reached the hype from back in 2012 when the Facebook ( FB ) IPO blew up. Now over a year later and with Facebook soaring, one might expect the stock to offer huge upside potential, but one glaring issue exists. The company is a publicly traded venture capital fund that invests in technology and cleantech companies prior to an IPO. It is run by well-known tech investor Kevin Landis that charges management fees of 2% of gross assets and 20% of capital gains. The company competes for investments with venture capitalists, accredited investors and other public funds such as GSV Capital ( GSVC ) and Keating Capital ( KIPO ) . Read the full article at Seeking Alpha. Disclosure: Long GSVC. Please revie...

Kevin Landis is one of the well known Portfolio Managers still around from the dot com error. He was well respected in the investment world up until the crash. His funds also highlight the issues with being a sector driven PM. Nice when your sector is soaring but horrible when the boom turns too bust. Barons did a nice write up on him and his funds. Lately Landis has put up some impressive results and based on history it's worth reviewing his picks. He is well known for investing in leading edge technologies. Unfortunately if you aren't careful such investments can quickly turn into bleeding edge. Those investment tend to bleed you dry before paying out.The combination of the valuations in some tech stocks and the fact that he is starting to get press makes me wonder about a topping action in tech. Unlikely yet, but worth watching. Landis has easily outperformed the sector and SP500 over the last 1, 3, and 5 years, but once you go back 10 years his record runs into the 200...