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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: baggo who wrote (32032)	9/1/1998 11:33:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Brice, I like your rhyme buddy, Tice, and his fund. Prudent Bear may be better than Ursa over a cycle, because he can go long undervalued stocks. But I still don't like the risk/reward tradeoff. MB

To: baggo who wrote (32032)	9/2/1998 10:08:00 AM
From: HB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

As someone who owns a bit of BEARX, I feel there are probably better managed bear fund alternatives. I used the recent weakness in the market to sell about 40% of my BEARX (not Monday, unfortunately, but last week. This fund has a 3% expense ratio, which is high. Sometimes its performance is annoyingly bad even when the market is going down, although one can't expect perfect inverse correlation. If you are free to do so, shorting SPY (S&P500 basket) and DIA (?symbol) for the dow jones might make more liquid, lower-expense bear alternatives, although with Tice you get short some smaller, junkier stocks (and more NASDAQ) which might have more oomph on the way down. DIA short would've made more sense a while ago. Also, this seems like maybe the wrong time to be getting into a bear fund... wait for the bounce. (OK, maybe yesterday was the bounce). I suspect it takes time for this market to crumble, and recent events were, all in all, just one more brick out of the wall. 7000's until there is more news. (Like Yuan devaluation, big trouble at German banks, etc.... but the Japanese could also start getting their act together...) (In fact, the fact that there is so much interest in the MB thread and the Prudent Bear thread suggests caution on BEARX. Similar stuff was going on early this year.) I wish I'd bought COAGX (Caldwell & Orkin Mkt. Oppty.), which I was seriously considering instead of BEARX, but it is a bit less short-heavy, or was at the time. Sure as hell performed better. That is probably where the money I took out of BEARX is going, if we get a nice bounce. Noticed they're mentioned in a recent news story. fnews.yahoo.com That was an Aug. 28 story, and the guy was adding to his shorts to keep the fund at its (max) 40% short position. According to the article, he had 20.2% returns for the year, and the portfolio is currently 40% short, 43% long. Sounds like one smart f8er to me. With BEARX, I think you have to view it as much more volatile than a plain NASDAQ short, a basket of shorts picked by a not-super-great picker, and time your buys and sells to time the market. Seems like Orkin may be a decent enough stockpicker and timer you can just leave that stuff to him. That is the purpose of a mutual fund, right? :-). COAGX is not associated with a big fund family, so it's less likely to be fall into corporate mutual fund mediocrity. (I know someone who owns American Stores; after it dropped late last year(?) I noticed Orkin was buying more.... decided that made me feel better about this person holding ASC, that it would be smart to wait for the bounce back before thinking about selling. Good call, eh? (Not that she pays any attention when I suggest she sell, anyway :-)). Been trying to stay off SI, so I'll split for now. Cheers, HB