Name the fund .....

hank

Goal: "... long-term capital appreciation, with added emphasis on the protection of capital during unfavorable market conditions."

Inception: July, 2000
No-load
Manager Tenure: 16 years

(From Lipper):
ER: 1.13%
AUM: $528.5M
Current Holdings: 52% Stock, 49% Cash
Annualized Performance (mostly negative)
YTD: -9.54%
4-Weeks: -5.24%
1-Year: -7.90%
3-Years: -9.13%
5-Years: -9.60%
10-Years: -4.94%
From Inception (16 years): +1.49%

catch22

HSGFX

We can meet in a public location in Michigan so that you may award my grand prize.

Catch

hank

Hi Catch - Geez, I really need to edit/fact-check these stats for awhile before I can confirm or deny your answer. (We strive for accuracy here.) So, your prize will be delayed for an indefinite period.

Thanks, however, for participating in the game.

You may now direct your (obvious) intelligence to the questions of (1) Why anyone would own this fund and (2) How the same manager could remain in place for 16 years. (Each correct answer increases your prize amount by 10%.)
---

Edit: Anyone have easy access to how some of the broader indexes performed since 2000?
(S&P / Mixed bonds / 60-40 Balanced?) That would be very interesting. I'd imagine even a good short-term bond fund like Price's (PRWBX) would have bested 1.49%.

catch22

@hank
As long as I don't have to fill out a long form that details all private info about me, nor a hold-harmless agreement as to whether any "fraud" has or will take place and my ability to sue you or your legal attachments is not withdrawn or held, and/or that any and all electronic accounts I maintain won't be overwhelmed with spam mail.

MikeM

The most amazing stat in your post is the AUM. There is still $528.5 million in this fund?

Crash

hank said:

Hi Catch - Geez, I really need to edit/fact-check these stats for awhile before I can confirm or deny your answer. (We strive for accuracy here.) So, your prize will be delayed for an indefinite period.

Thanks, however, for participating in the game.

You may now direct your (obvious) intelligence to the questions of (1) Why anyone would own this fund and (2) How the same manager could remain in place for 16 years. (Each correct answer increases your prize amount by 10%.)
---

Edit: Anyone have easy access to how some of the broader indexes performed since 2000?
(S&P / Mixed bonds / 60-40 Balanced?) That would be very interesting. I'd imagine even a good short-term bond fund like Price's (PRWBX) would have bested 1.49%.

Manager has lasted 16 years, on such performance??? Nepotism, I should think, is in play, here.

My two biggest holdings carry both stocks and bonds, but I don't ever remember either of them holding up to FORTY percent bonds. I recognize a 60/40 mix is the classic recipe for later-life and retirement stability. PRWCX and MAPOX. Totally fabulous in every way. Except that it's not possible to have sex with them. ...
...I just looked at PRWBX, but my Interm. Term bond funds have a leg-up in terms of performance--- even though bonds have been crucified since the election. I understand that a short-term bond fund is there in order to cover a DIFFERENT base than a standard Core bond fund. My bond funds: DLFNX, PRSNX, PREMX. Add the two balanced funds, and my stuff does indeed approach that 40% figure, at 39%. (39 bonds, 44 domestic equity, 8 foreign equity, 7 cash and 2 convertibles or shorts. I don't engage in shorts. It's the Fund Manager's own play.
Happy Saturday. Thanks to those on this message board and its creators and contributors!

Low_Tech

49% cash??? Yer kidding.

FWIW: Vanguard Balanced, VBINX, since inception in 1992 -- +8.08% annualized, .22% ER.

James Golden Balanced, GLRBX, since 1991 -- +7.06%, .97 ER.

hank

Just looking at that -5.24% 4-week return, I'd say somebody got caught flat-footed by the election result and the ensuing bond collapse.

msf

"Nepotism, I should think, is in play, here"

Nah, nepotism entails favor by a relative or friend. No such second person here - Hussman himself is the president and primary shareholder of the management company (according to M*). In theory, fund boards are supposed to be independent of the management company, but that's almost never how things work.

An offbeat clue as to what may have piqued Hank's interest: before Hussman put himself in charge of the fund, he was a professor at Univ. of Michigan and Michigan Business School. (Again from M*)

One has to be careful with figures for funds that make heavy use of derivatives. This is a market neutral fund (formerly a long-short fund), which IMHO automatically makes cash figures suspect. It's a matter of interpretation.

According to the annual report, the fund had net assets of $580M, it was long $587M in equities, but these were 99% hedged with various options (that according to the report, behave like shorts).

It also held $261M in "real" cash, while the value of the call options it wrote was negative $282M. Throw in a few other small items, and you get a net portfolio size of $580M.

In round numbers, the stocks represent 100% of the value of the fund, the cash 50% of the value of the fund, and the written options -50%. If you want to say that means 50% of the (net) assets are cash, fine. That seems to be what M* and Lipper are doing. Then the 50% equities comes from the 100% stock minus the 50% options.

Or you could say the $261M of cash represents 1/4 of the stuff it's managing (counting the magnitudes or absolute values of its holdings). Or you might completely disregard the cash, as it appears to be there to cover the options; it doesn't seem to be typical cash "sitting on the sidelines".

It takes a lot of work to figure out what the numbers really mean, and I've only spent a couple of minutes here. Not enough to get my head wrapped around it.

hank

msf, You'll observe he no longer works at the U of M.

Crash

Apologies to all. I just watched the film again. I couldn't help myself. Great ensemble cast, including Kevin Costner's body, but not his face. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085244/trivia "The Big Chill." All of them went to school together at U-Michigan. TV football scenes from their Saturday together show Bo Schembechler . "Go Blue!"
"The name of the American higher educational institution in the USA that the seven friends had attended during the 1960s was the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. This campus that the characters in the picture attended, Michigan University, was the same tertiary educational institution that director and co-screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan had studied at." ("Tertiary?" His third academic degree?) "Whatever happened to that land we were all going to buy up by Saginaw?" ..."None of us had any money."

LewisBraham

Maybe he's too busy doing other things to care about the fund anymore:
hussmanfoundation.org/

hussmanautism.org/team/hussman-john-p-ph-d-ms-ed/

hihg.med.miami.edu/

hank

LewisBraham said:

Maybe he's too busy doing other things to care about the fund anymore.

Yes - He does appear to be spread rather thin.
http://www.hussmanfitness.org/html/TSCalDeficits.htm

hank

I owned HSGFX for a few years shortly after its inception. In theory, it's a great idea: capture most of the equity market's positive return - while hedging against steep market declines. (It's not my intent here to attempt to analyze its inner workings.) Should the fund be classified as market neutral? Perhaps. But within that camp there are numerous, sometimes sharply contrasting, approaches and styles. I think most would find HSGFX's approach and operation a bit unconventional within the market neutral arena.

I keep the fund on a short tracking list along with 8-10 other funds that I don't own. Provides a glimpse (albeit incomplete and cursory) into how funds like HSGFX, as well as precious metals, high yield, GNMAs, growth, value, etc. react to market developments over both shorter and longer term periods. A purely academic persuit some would find pointless - but from which I feel I gain a better understanding of investing.

What I've observed over the past decade or more watching this fund is that during poor markets it does normally inch ahead a bit. But for every 1-foot it advances during adverse periods, it appears to lose 2-feet when the markets resume an upward bias. Over longer periods that's a losing proposition.
-

It would be sacrilegious I suppose to suggest that Hussman attempts to time markets. So I won't. However, I'll submit that you or I as individual small investors are better equiped to time markets than a fund is. We are nimble. We are focused. We can react and literally alter our allocation on a dime. The big guys can't do this. They're anything but nimble - and since money tends to flood either in or out of funds near market inflection points, the onrush makes the manager's ability to alter his investment mix even harder.

VintageFreak

FWIW, I don't think he is timing the markets. Like I've said before, his HEDGING is flawed. Option decay should definitely lose the fund every year with a neutral position, but not the amount he is losing.

I know I'm the last person holding this fund at MFO. At least the only one who will admit to it. His implementation is more flawed than his logic. Taking tax losses every year and rolling proceeds into HSTRX has eased my burden and I will continue to do so. The only reason I'm not selling outright is you never know when the tide will turn and I've already sold a good chunk of my most costliest shares.

He still has 1,000,000+ in 3 of his 4 funds and 500,000+ in his 50% hedged fund HSVLX which is up 5+ % up YTD. To me this once more suggests his 100% hedging is the issue with HSGFX. Anyways, I will keep up the good work and keep rolling tax loss proceeds into HSTRX till I get out.