Planet MicroCap · Oct 2, 2026 · 49m · 34m saved
With Jeremy Kokemor, Founder and Portfolio Manager of Right Tail Capital
Right Tail Capital owns around 15 businesses, and in a typical year only zero to three new ones make it into the portfolio.
Many new investment firms fail, Jeremy Kokemor said, and a common mistake is spending on staff and offices before the assets arrive. He saw that pattern up close while evaluating early-stage hedge funds, and he runs Right Tail as a one-person firm with a cost base built for the long term. His sense of what quality means came from the opposite end of the market: his first assignment at T. Rowe Price was small-cap metals and mining.
"Often these companies are maybe trying to build one project and the budget for that project is greater than the enterprise value of the business. So they're constantly trying to raise money and sell dreams." — Jeremy Kokemor
Jeremy Kokemor, founder and portfolio manager of Right Tail Capital, on Planet MicroCap: he started as a junior buy-side analyst in 2006, joined T. Rowe Price in 2010 after a Harvard Business School MBA, and remains the largest investor in his own fund.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 49 minutes of audio, 15 minutes of reading.
Here are the 13 principles that matter.
Key Takeaways
A new holding has to rank at the portfolio's median or better on expected return, not just beat the weakest name
He targets companies that can double in five years, roughly 15% a year
Covering small-cap miners taught him that some companies sell dreams
New funds fail at a high rate, and a common mistake is building too big a firm before the assets arrive
NRP, a coal royalty owner, will likely have zero debt within a quarter or two, Kokemor said
HCA holds the number one or two position in 80% of its local markets, against an industry about two-thirds nonprofit or research hospitals
AI now answers his research questions almost in real time, but has not caught a management inconsistency for him
He would not put a 0% probability on AI disrupting Constellation Software, though he thinks it unlikely
When a thesis breaks, he sells, whether he was wrong or just unlucky
1. A Fifth-Grade Stock Habit
Kokemor grew up in New Orleans with divorced parents and not much money. In fifth grade he and his grandfather would check the prices of the stocks in his grandfather's modest portfolio in the local newspaper.
Money, and how it grows, was the first draw
"So I was always kind of fascinated with the idea of how does one earn and then grow a pool of money." — Jeremy Kokemor
At the University of Virginia he started premed and finished with a double major in economics and history, which he now reads as a general love of learning. A few years after graduating, in 2006, he got a job as a junior buy-side analyst, and he said researching companies and trying to make well-reasoned investments has held his interest ever since. What he liked, he said, was the full package: learning what companies and industries do, talking to management teams, and the end goal of compounding capital for investors.
