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Strategies & Market Trends : Stock Mania ! - Mutual Funds that can short. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kahunabear who wrote (8)	4/30/1998 10:40:00 AM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 129

I have not studied them but the idea of a "market-neutral" fund sounds somewhat goofy to me. With stocks on average yielding less than 1.5%, the fund expenses would about eat up any income. It would seem to me that burying cash in a mason jar might be much the same thing. If any of the funds have been going up recently, then they must not be really "market-neutral." Am I missing something about these?

To: kahunabear who wrote (8)	4/30/1998 10:52:00 AM
From: drsvelte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 129

"I would be really very interested in hearing which ones you think have the best chance to perform well". Well, I don't think its BEARX. I have some of this fund, and its behavior is clearly inversely correlated to the S&P. Thanks, for starting this thread. drsvelte

To: kahunabear who wrote (8)	4/30/1998 11:12:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 129

WS. Part Two. 3. Relative performance ruins most of the potentially good managers. It is a silly concept and the people with the smarts to actually make money all the time are more worried about keeping up with their peers this quarter. I blame modern portfolio theory and technical analysis for this problem. Nobody believes they can really beat the average by a lot, so they do tiny variations off the indices. They swing for singles. IMHO, hire the smartest guy you know (even if he's a gal) and let him swing for homeruns. That doesn't happen any more. I marvel at how little confidence managers with decent relative performance records have in their own abilities. Heck, I always believed I could outmanage any other manager, whup anyone in the room, and make love to every beautiful woman. It didn't always work out that way, but I would sure feel uncomfortable having my money managed by these timid tots made of ticky-tacky. <G> 4. Overlapping CFTC and SEC regulations gave me my first gray hairs. Loreal Lightest Auburn got rid of them. The gray hairs. It would have only have gotten rid of the regulator ferrets if I could have trickd them into drinking it. <G> 5. The lack of smarts and courage among fund directors and fund co. mgts. In the first case, I can't blame them. There is no upside for directors, only downside in the form of lawsuits. 6. Closed end funds are the better vehicle, but nobody is offering new ones because the public has caught on that most go to discounts immediately. Aim Strategic was the last good convertible arb fund out there, where you buy converts and short the stock. Alas, they are now open end and boring. 7. I am beginning to think that managed futures accounts may be the best vehicle. I have just started looking at them. Basically, though hedging and speculating are my life, I have little confidence in the ability of mutual fund companies to make a go of a sophisticated investment style. The Ursas are just dull. Why not short the Spyders and get a short sale rebate? Same game, better potential return/lower costs. A few of the others seem to be talking the talk, but I have to watch them with a hairy eyeball for a while before I believe they can walk the walk. Good luck, MB