Morningstar's recommendations on long/short funds

David_Snowball

"Some of the funds we like in this area are Robeco Boston Partners Long/Short Equity, Robeco Boston Partners Research Fund, MainStay Marketfield, and Wasatch Long/Short." Four Medalist Ideas for Long-Short Strategies, 4/24/14.

I'd describe those as Long Closed, Recently Closed, Bloated (they had $1 billion three years ago and $21 billion today; trailing 12 month performance is exactly mediocre which might be a blip or might be the effects of the $11 billion they picked up last year) and Very Solid, respectively.

David

cman

I have been very impressed by Robeco Boston Partners in how disciplined they have been in opening/closing their funds at reasonable levels. I believe they even set forth the guidelines explicitly in their prospectus.

No opinion on the performance of their funds, but that is the model I wish more funds had. But then that might mean all good funds being closed at a point in time leaving far fewer choices. Small caps had this problem in the 2000s.

Charles

Thanks David. Kind of what we've come to expect, I'd say.

Hey, Whitebox (my heavy) gets no love either. Note that its AUM has grown to $744M. Fund proper with reach 3 year mark in November.

Bitzer

I currently own one and used to own two others of the funds mentioned in Dr. Snowball's original post above. One of my biggest investing mistakes was to act on Morningstar's recommendations. For the actively managed funds portion of my portfolio, the Great Owls list is my only resource.