Thomas Hayes — research hub

Managing member of Great Hill Capital — a value/turnaround stock picker ("good businesses at great prices"; doubles and triples over 3–5 years) who also makes tactical macro/rotation calls; runs the free weekly blog and "Hedge Fund Tips with Tom Hayes" podcast at hedgefundtips.com. Running synthesis of his video/podcast appearances, with per-transcript breakdowns and a stock index.

Sections: stock index · overall thesis · the product · transcripts. Last updated 2026-AUG-13.

Stock & name index

▲ Positive

Ticker	Name	Current thesis	Research	Seen in	Total $k
DEO	Diageo	Defensive-consumer turnaround and AI beneficiary: cut in half from 2021 highs yet still $3B FCF and 13.4% ROIC (FY2026), growing double digits ex-US, with "drastic Dave" Lewis fixing the US tequila drag — "trading like it's going out of business."	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	0.2
DIS	The Walt Disney Company	Offensive-consumer pick: a new CEO drawn from the highest-ROIC experiences segment, capital redirected there (cruises, parks), streaming flipped to FCF-positive and ESPN being re-rated — the recurring 15-20 year setup where the stock halves and the IP library is rediscovered.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
XRAY	DENTSPLY Sirona	Healthcare turnaround he owns: the largest dental-supply franchise since the late 1800s, GDP-growing, beaten down on bad management — and it used its tariff refund to buy back stock in the hole ("watch what they do").	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—

► Neutral / referenced

Ticker	Name	Current thesis	Research	Seen in	Total $k
APO	Apollo Global Management	One of six arrangers in Nvidia's $500B compute-financing consortium — paid fees for brokering and distributing securitized GPU exposure while the credit risk lands on insurers and retail.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
BLK	BlackRock	Consortium member in the $500B Nvidia AI-infrastructure financing platform; the mid-August Hamptons convening tells him the AI thesis has run out of conventional financing.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
BN	Brookfield Corporation	Named among the long-term capital providers underwriting Nvidia's $500B of third-party AI-infrastructure financing.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
BX	Blackstone	Consortium member in the $500B AI-infrastructure financing platform — fee income now, securitized GPU collateral risk distributed to end buyers.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
CMCSA	Comcast (Universal Parks)	Cited only as the read-across everyone got wrong: weak Universal parks made the market expect a bad Disney print — "Universal was crap. Disney was up."	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
CRWV	CoreWeave	Its strong print is the standard objection to his sell call — and his answer is that a discounting market has already priced it. Cited as evidence of retail recency bias, not a company view.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
GS	Goldman Sachs	Consortium arranger; his 2007-08 analogy — the structurers "won't get hurt" because they collect fees, while the loss sits with whoever holds the paper when the collateral turns out to be obsolete chips.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
KKR	KKR & Co.	Consortium member whose deal depends on convincing rating agencies to stamp securitized GPU exposure investment grade so it can be sold to insurance companies and retail.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
MU	Micron Technology	Named with TSMC/CoreWeave/Nebius as the "known" good news powering the bounce; memory is where crowding is worst and no semi name has made a new high on the rip.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
NBIS	Nebius Group	Same bucket as CoreWeave: a strong AI-infrastructure print being used to justify chasing the dead-cat bounce, which he dismisses as already discounted.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
TSCO.L	Tesco	Named only as the site of "drastic Dave" Lewis' best-known turnaround before Diageo — the evidence behind Hayes' "new jockey is critical" test.	STK	2026-AUG-12	—
TSM	Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing	The "insatiable demand" headline he fades — already known and discounted; semis/memory remain the most crowded trade in the world and he expects them to weaken again in coming months.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
UL	Unilever	Named only as part of the Diageo jockey's pedigree — where Dave Lewis built the cost-discipline and brand-management record Hayes underwrites.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—

▼ Negative

Ticker	Name	Current thesis	Research	Seen in	Total $k
Anthropic	Anthropic (private)	The other frontier lab the AI trade is predicated on; enterprises shocked by token bills are defecting to open-weight models, undermining the revenue assumed behind the $1.5T of unfunded commitments.	—	2026-AUG-12	—
GOOGL	Alphabet	Its $85B upsized raise — the largest in US corporate history — is the supply-overwhelms-demand exhibit; asked whether the capex is productive: "the results in the short term have shown you that it's a bad use of capital."	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
INTC	Intel	The dilution datapoint: with hyperscaler free cash flow exhausted, the AI complex is raising debt and equity — Intel diluted shareholders by "20 some odd percent."	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
NVDA	Nvidia	Negative on the financing, not the chips: the $500B third-party compute platform securitizes depreciating GPUs and works only if rating agencies bless it — "if you don't get paid back, you're basically not secured by anything useful." A 3-to-5-year problem.	QT · SA · STK · FA	2026-AUG-12	—
OpenAI	OpenAI (private)	Half of the single point of failure: ~$1.5T of unfunded commitments rest on the two frontier labs, which "don't have the income to fund the commitments of capex" the entire finance industry is relying upon — while open-weight models undercut them at 1/10th to 1/100th the cost.	—	2026-AUG-12	—

Overall thesis

In one line: a value/turnaround stock picker who trades the crowd, not the macro — buy good businesses at dislocated prices for doubles and triples over 3–5 years, and use positioning extremes (record concentrated call buying, leveraged-ETF concentration, hedge-fund redemption flow) to time when to leave a crowded trade and where the abandoned money goes next. As of 2026-AUG-12: the August semis rip is a dead-cat bounce he is selling, and the rotation is a consumer barbell — staples + healthcare (25-year relative lows to the S&P) for defense, consumer discretionary (10-year relative lows) for offense.

Process before macro. "This is all entertaining talk about guessing which way rates are going to go… we just like to buy good businesses at great prices. When the price is dislocated, they're out of favor — and sell them when everyone wants them." Rate and currency calls are entertainment; they don't drive the P&L. The mandate is doubles and triples over a few years (2026-AUG-12).
Positioning is the timing tool. His June "get out of semis" call — which preceded a 24% July waterfall — came from record concentrated retail call buying in semiconductors, the most crowded trade in the world. He sees the same pattern on the August bounce: AI exposure inside leveraged ETFs up from 26% to 58% in two years, retail back in one-day options.
Fade the rip after institutional damage. July losses at levered funds (Whale Rock −21.7%, Lone Pine −27%, Altimeter −11%, Situational Awareness −67%, Vera −44% in one month) produced redemption requests on August 1. Professionals don't sell in the hole — they sell strength — so the supply arrives exactly when the tape looks best: "coming to a theater near you in coming weeks." Good CoreWeave/Nebius/TSMC/Micron prints don't change it because "that's known."
The rotation: bet on the US consumer, both ways. Defensives (consumer staples + healthcare) at ~25-year relative lows and consumer discretionary at ~10-year relative lows, with confidence bouncing off all-time lows as insurance premiums and rents finally soften. Utilities are excluded — they were re-rated as part of the AI trade and will fall with it. Named: DEO (defensive consumer), DIS (offensive consumer), XRAY (healthcare turnaround he owns).
The turnaround checklist. Free cash flow intact while the stock "trades like it's going out of business"; a real ROIC so you get your money back without needing the story; a proven new jockey ("critical in a turnaround"); a margin of safety underwritten on a permanently lower baseline; and category leadership. DEO: −50% from 2021, $3B FCF, 13.4% ROIC FY2026, "drastic Dave" Lewis (ex-Tesco/Unilever) fixing the US tequila drag. And "watch what they say, but watch what they do" — XRAY spending its tariff refund on buybacks in the hole is the tell.
Not an AI bear — an AI-timing bear. Mid-innings, and he thinks the payoff arrives in another 18–24 months. But productivity growth is the only ROI indicator that counts ("everything else… is noise") and there is no sign of it yet. Meanwhile the complex has flipped from buybacks to record issuance (GOOGL's $85B — the largest raise in US corporate history; INTC diluting ~20%), and $1.5T of unfunded commitments rest on two frontier labs that can't fund them while enterprises defect to open-weight models at 1/10th–1/100th the cost.
The financing is the fault line. Nvidia's $500B third-party compute-financing consortium (Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman, KKR) securitizes depreciating GPUs: "if you don't get paid back, you're basically not secured by anything useful." It works only if the rating agencies — paid handsomely — bless it as investment grade. A "mañana problem": useless as a 3-month trade, decisive in 3–5 years.
Buy the AI trade at despondency, not at a price. The 1995–2000 template: the SOX had three 50% drawdowns even though the internet delivered "times ten" — the error was paying in 2000 as if it had already arrived. He expects a final melt-up into the election (calls for S&P 8,000–9,000, retail back in the boat), then the trapdoor — and that's when he builds the long-term list.
Rates & FX (held loosely). The chorus of hikes is fading, which "usually precedes the chorus of cuts accelerating" — a cut before a hike becomes material in coming months, with Warsh draining the balance sheet first to earn the room. Bessent's yen intervention is indirect yield control; stay long a weaker dollar and stronger yen over the next couple of years.
The too-hard box. Software's carnage looks like generational value on price-to-free-cash-flow, but he can't rule out full disintermediation in five years — "I'm an investor, not a psychic" — so it's declined outright rather than sized small.

The product — Great Hill Capital / Hedge Fund Tips

What it is: Thomas Hayes is managing member of Great Hill Capital (greathillcapital.com) — "our day job is we run money for ultra high net worth and family offices." The retail-facing side is entirely free: a weekly blog at hedgefundtips.com that takes two of the firm's own holdings and "goes into analysis," plus the "Hedge Fund Tips with Tom Hayes" podcast (YouTube and podcast apps), which he notes is "top in the hedge fund category, which is a narrow category, but we're happy about that." There is no paid newsletter or alerts tier described.

From his own description in the material archived here (2026-AUG-12, ~53:30).

Offering	What it is	How he runs it	Seen in the index
Great Hill Capital (the fund)	Discretionary value/turnaround equity management for ultra-high-net-worth individuals and family offices.	"Good businesses at great prices" — buy dislocated, out-of-favor names, sell when everyone wants them; target doubles and triples over 3–5 years. Positions get named publicly on shows like this one.	DEO, DIS, XRAY
Free weekly blog (hedgefundtips.com)	A free weekly written note covering two of the firm's own holdings with full analysis.	Free, no gate described — the same names he discusses on air, written up rather than teased.	—
"Hedge Fund Tips with Tom Hayes" podcast	Free podcast/YouTube show aimed at people who "invest on the basis of fundamentals, knowing what you're paying for."	Explicitly positioned against momentum content: "if you want to invest on price and the flavor of the month, that's other podcasts."	—
Interview appearances	Long-form TV/podcast interviews (The David Lin Report and others) where the current rotation call and named picks are laid out.	Calls are made in advance and revisited on the record — the June "get out of semis" call was reviewed on air after the July waterfall.	the whole index

How it serves retail investors:

Free, and specific. The blog names two actual holdings a week with analysis rather than gating the pick — unusual for a manager whose paying clients are family offices.
Institutional flow data, translated. The monthly hedge-fund performance tables and redemption mechanics he reads out loud (who lost what in July, when their redemption requests land) are the plumbing retail investors rarely see explained.
A stated, checkable process. "Price is what you pay, value is what you get"; doubles and triples in 3–5 years; a "too hard" box for what he won't underwrite — a framework you can apply and score, not a signal service.
Calls kept on the record. He returns to the same shows and gets asked about prior calls, which makes the track record auditable in public.

Transcripts

One dated page per appearance — each has its talking points and the saved transcript. Newest first.

Date	Title / analysis page	Show	Video	Transcript	Actionable insights
2026-AUG-12	Called The Tech Wipeout, Now Reveals The Next Great Rotation	The David Lin Report	▶ YouTube	transcript	actionable insights

To process — backlog

Thomas Hayes appearances discovered via search (Thomas Hayes Great Hill Capital interview), not yet processed — verify publish dates & channels, newest first. Limited to the last ~2 years. Known but not yet resolved to a video id: his prior David Lin Report appearance aired 2026-JUN-02 — the "great rotation out of leadership / get out of semis" call revisited at 2026-AUG-12 (16:30). Worth processing for the original call.

For personal study — not investment advice. Source material © the respective shows / Great Hill Capital / Hedge Fund Tips.