Tracking George Soros's Portfolio - Q1 2013 Update [View article]
You are right on the money - cloning Soros is pretty much a lost cause. But, there are a couple of things that can be gained from studying his trading style and the moves reported in the regulatory forms:
a) Determine what trends he is trying to take advantage of and try to do the same in your own portfolio, and b) Portfolios that mimics his trading style may be implemented using mechanical models - such models are generally trade intensive but can provide good absolute returns.
Berkowitz is a contrarian deep-value investor who takes very concentrated positions. Even with the bad year, his long-term track record is exceptional. Given his record and the investing style, one has to buy into his capital allocation skills and have a very long-term orientation when buying into his flagship fund.
FOCIX launched in 2009 is an alternative for income oriented investors. Also, he has talked about the benefits of having permanent capital and so it is possible that he will have alternate investment vehicles (may be a closed-end fund) at some point - performance chasing that resulted in redemptions and forced selling has been a problem for the fund since 2010.
His biggest holdings (AIG, BAC, etc) bounced back in 2012 and posted very good returns accounting for the 36% fund return. But, the ones he sold in 2012 must have resulted in realized losses - distributions from growth oriented mutual funds is not something one can rely on as evidenced here. Basically, one has to hold it for its overall performance.
My guess is that they probably had realized losses in 2012 and so there was nothing to distribute.
Per Morningstar, the distributions for the previous five years were as follows: Year - Total Distributions (Dividends): 2011 - 0.91 (0.67), 2010 - 2.0787 (0.3884), 2009 - 0.2674 (0.2674), and 2008 - 0.5404 (0.1057).
If the fund received dividends or realized capital gains from their holdings, they are required to distribute them by law. But the bulk of their holdings do not pay dividends and so dividend distributions may be minimal this year as well.
Berkshire BV at EOY2012 was indicated as $114,214 per Class A share. So, Buffett’s repurchase criteria would indicate the high-watermark as $137,056 (120% of BV). Around that price-range will probably act as floor for the share price as well. Current price is well above the repurchase criteria and so it may make sense to wait for a better entry point.
The article is based on the regulatory 13F filing which only has long positions. Ackman's 12/2012 "Who wants to be a millionaire" presentation disclosed a short positon in HLF and called the company's business a "pyramid scheme". He went on to announce that he is taking the financial incentive out of the equation by doing two things:
a) He will donate all profits from the trade to charity, and b) He will not day trade the stock as he is in for the long-term and the stock should go to zero.
Daniel Loeb and Carl Icahn are believed to be on the other side of this equation.
I am not planning to sell at these prices. Baupost eliminated the position at much higher prices and it will be interesting to see whether he will re-initiate the position this quarter.
Tracking George Soros's Portfolio - Q4 2012 Update [View article]
2.6M shares is what he owns out of 212M shares outstanding. So, it is 1.25% of the company. It might be good to add that information as well. Let me see what can be done without cluttering the spreadsheet too much.
I checked the 10K that just came out and the BYD position is not mentioned probably because the value of his position (assuming the original position was kept constant) would have been around $675M as of EOY2012, well below the $1B threshold for the 10K list.
Buffett originally invested $250M for the shares in 2008 and so he is sitting on gains of over 170%.
A 2013 Diversified Bullish Portfolio In 10 Positions [View article]
Roles of AMCX and KONA should be reversed - AMCX has $4B market cap vs $73M for KONA and yet you have classified AMCX as small-cap and KONA as mid-cap.
DXD and QID are not good for hedging over a period of one year (2013) because of their daily performance tracking characteristic - over a year they will perform much worse than "2x inverse". To see this, QID returned negative 18.5% over the last year while its corresponding index ETF QQQ returned positive 4.63%. A straight "2x inverse" should have been negative 9.26%. The leveraged ETFs have this problem. Please see http://seekingalpha.co... for further explanation. Also, only half the hedging requirement (negative correlation) is satisfied when using inverse market ETFs. The other half is positive expected return.
I also question whether the resultant portfolio is really a bullish bet. Since 30% of the portfolio is aimed at being "2x short" major areas of the market, the total portfolio is just 10% net long.
LO - "Unfortunately, it no longer offers a weekly option, but this is one of those companies that if not assigned this month will likely be assigned soon, as tobacco companies have this knack for survival, much more so than their customers."
Tracking George Soros's Portfolio - Q4 2012 Update [View article]
Arch Coal is a minute position compared to his overall 13F portfolio size (~0.2% - $19M out of $8.4B portfolio). The spreadsheet does not show such positions as there are a large number of them - the total value of all such positions is shown in the last line.
On GNW, do you have a link to an article/document that mentions the narrower price-ranges you quoted? - we basically looked at the price-ranges the stock traded at during those two quarters to come up with the ranges in the article.
Tracking George Soros's Portfolio - Q1 2013 Update [View article]
Regards,
John.
Tracking George Soros's Portfolio - Q1 2013 Update [View article]
a) Determine what trends he is trying to take advantage of and try to do the same in your own portfolio, and
b) Portfolios that mimics his trading style may be implemented using mechanical models - such models are generally trade intensive but can provide good absolute returns.
Regards,
John.
Tracking Bruce Berkowitz's Fairholme Portfolio - Q1 2013 Update [View article]
FOCIX launched in 2009 is an alternative for income oriented investors. Also, he has talked about the benefits of having permanent capital and so it is possible that he will have alternate investment vehicles (may be a closed-end fund) at some point - performance chasing that resulted in redemptions and forced selling has been a problem for the fund since 2010.
Regards,
John.
Tracking Bruce Berkowitz's Fairholme Portfolio - Q1 2013 Update [View article]
Regards,
John.
Tracking Bruce Berkowitz's Fairholme Portfolio - Q1 2013 Update [View article]
Per Morningstar, the distributions for the previous five years were as follows: Year - Total Distributions (Dividends): 2011 - 0.91 (0.67), 2010 - 2.0787 (0.3884), 2009 - 0.2674 (0.2674), and 2008 - 0.5404 (0.1057).
Regards,
John.
Tracking Bruce Berkowitz's Fairholme Portfolio - Q1 2013 Update [View article]
Regards,
John.
Tracking Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio - Q1 2013 Update [View article]
Regards,
John.
Tracking Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Portfolio - Q1 2013 Update [View article]
a) He will donate all profits from the trade to charity, and
b) He will not day trade the stock as he is in for the long-term and the stock should go to zero.
Daniel Loeb and Carl Icahn are believed to be on the other side of this equation.
Regards,
John.
Tracking Seth Klarman's Baupost Group Holdings - Q1 2013 Update [View article]
Regards,
John.
Tracking George Soros's Portfolio - Q4 2012 Update [View article]
Regards,
John.
Tracking Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio - Q4 2012 Update [View article]
Buffett originally invested $250M for the shares in 2008 and so he is sitting on gains of over 170%.
Regards,
John.
A 2013 Diversified Bullish Portfolio In 10 Positions [View article]
DXD and QID are not good for hedging over a period of one year (2013) because of their daily performance tracking characteristic - over a year they will perform much worse than "2x inverse". To see this, QID returned negative 18.5% over the last year while its corresponding index ETF QQQ returned positive 4.63%. A straight "2x inverse" should have been negative 9.26%. The leveraged ETFs have this problem. Please see http://seekingalpha.co... for further explanation. Also, only half the hedging requirement (negative correlation) is satisfied when using inverse market ETFs. The other half is positive expected return.
I also question whether the resultant portfolio is really a bullish bet. Since 30% of the portfolio is aimed at being "2x short" major areas of the market, the total portfolio is just 10% net long.
Regards,
John.
Wishful Thinking [View article]
Wonderful commentary!
Regards,
John.
Tracking George Soros's Portfolio - Q4 2012 Update [View article]
Regards,
John.
Tracking Seth Klarman's Baupost Group Holdings - Q4 2012 Update [View article]
On GNW, do you have a link to an article/document that mentions the narrower price-ranges you quoted? - we basically looked at the price-ranges the stock traded at during those two quarters to come up with the ranges in the article.
Regards,
John.