Team

  • Kevin V. Ellis
    Kevin Ellis is a Managing Director of Horse Cove Partners LLC, an investment adviser with offices in Atlanta, GA. Drawing upon his 30 years of...
  • Samuel T. Dekinder
    Sam DeKinder is a founder and Managing Director of Horse Cove Partners LLC, an investment adviser with offices in Atlanta, GA. Mr. DeKinder chairs the...
  • Gregory Brennan
    Gregory Brennan is a Portfolio Manager responsible for implementing the options trading strategy of Horse Cove Partners. Greg brings more than 16 years of investment experience...
  • Don Trotter
    Don Trotter was a Managing Director and founder (1992) of Atlantic Asset Management, LLC, with $7 billion of assets under management when sold in 2015....

A few words about us

Photo of Sam DeKinder reviewing weekly stock market performance for strategic option trading

Horse Cove Partners was founded by Sam DeKinder and Kevin Ellis in January of 2013 with the commitment to help grow client’s assets with a highly disciplined investment strategy, replicated weekly, to extract absolute returns from the market by trading short volatility option spreads. The firm was launched after more than two years of trading experience with personal assets, and is built on the strength of hedge fund trading experience developed beginning in 2002.
“We do not believe we are smarter than the market, nor can we time the market in any given week or month. As a result, we take an investment approach similar to an insurance company in that our investment strategy focuses on probability of success and the management of risk. We believe that it is possible to realize positive returns through disciplined focus on the risk of each trade with a weekly investment horizon, and accepting intelligent losses when risk events occur.”

Our capabilities

1
Results

The average annual rolling returns (any 12 consecutive months) are 11.44% (results through December 2023) net of fees and expenses.

2
Tax Efficient Returns and Absolute Returns

The returns from the option contracts we trade are tax advantaged. Under IRS Sect. 1256, the returns from selling options are taxed to the investor as 60% long term capital gains and 40% short term capital gains.
One of the key components of our strategy is that is does not need a special market environment to be effective. That means we can execute our trading strategy in rising, falling and flat market environments.

3
Favorable Likelihood of Success

By sticking to our curated methodology, we believe that we can execute trades with confidence of success based on time and history. While the past is not a guarantee of future success, we can learn from the past. For example, did you know that since 1990, when the VIX ® has been under 20%, that the S&P 500 has not declined more than 5% in any week? While this in and of itself is no guarantee that it will not happen in the future; it is relying on favorable probabilities of success like this, that in the aggregate produce positive returns for our clients.

4
Industry Veterans

Sam DeKinder and Kevin Ellis have over 75 years of combined industry and business experience that is available to the clients of Horse Cove Partners LLC to assist in their investment goals.