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I find CAMAX a very interesting fund...anyone own it?

beebee
edited January 2014 in Fund Discussions
Its volatility might keep you up at night, but it usually ends up on the sunny side of the street.

My thought is pairing it with a steady eddy like YACKX to add some octane and gauge it's performance. The startegy would be to add it's occasional outperformance to YACKX and average into CAMAX when it reaches underperformance levels.

It record is streaky, either in the top 1 % or in the bottom 99%...very hot or very cold.

It's catagorized as a LC value fund, but appears to be a World Stock Value fund (53% US / 45% Non US) with a MC to LC footprint. Maybe still nimble at just $175 million AUM and seems to favor Tech. Also very concentrated...top 10 holding make up 58% of the fund.

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Comments

  • MourningStars
    Been following since last summer but I can't quite make the purchase. Characterized as large value but is global large blend that can and does go short ( currently 3 short positions that total 6%.of portfolio.) The 1.35 ER is high for large cap blend but the ability and willingness to short in addition to the other tools available to Mr. Barish mitigates the negatives of the 1.35 for me.
  • finder
    edited January 2014
    I bought it once, and lost money: At first, it behaved beautifully, but then in 2011 it suddenly lost more than 1/3 of its value falling from the peak, and after that it behaved badly for about a year, so I took my losses. If you understand it well, or trust the manager despite its weird behavior, maybe you can use it properly, but it did not work for me.
  • catch22catch22
    edited January 2014
    Hi Bee,
    We held this fund during part of 2010. A real "watcher" indeed. I would rather use my time trading etf's, if I (me personally) really thought I knew what I was doing with frequent trading.
    I liked the holdings mix and read about Mr. Barish and the other Cambiar funds, too. I was too busy at the time to stay on top of this fund; as I feel that would be needed.
    Although your method of moving in and out of funds may do well with this fund.
    I don't recall our holding period, but believe we took a profit of 15% or so and sold the fund.

    Not that VTI or any other equity holdings are not going to have their up and downs; but the last 4 years comparing VTI and CAMAX (yes, they are not the same in composition) indicates that VTI returned about 78% and CAMAX about 72%.
    I suppose my lazy portfolio would have VTI and a similar international holding in place of trying to watch CAMAX. A real roller coaster fund.

    CAMAX, Fidelity composition view

    Take care,
    Catch
  • CrashCrash
    That risk/reward profile steers me clear.
  • gk3105gklm
    Lost $ in 2011. It went from $15 in 2/11 to $10 by 11/11. It is only for the trader , not for the investor. It is one sided fund. When it is good, it is very good. When it is bad, you have no idea why and what is going on. When the market melt down in 08, this fund was going up until 2/11 when other funds started to stabilize, this fund started to go really bad. It did not make sense. Maybe it will happen only once. I have more confidence with ETGLX nowadays.
  • TedTed
    Dear Bee: This is a Alpha Male Fund, not for the faint of heart. Like myself Barish is a poker player.
    Copy & Paste Denver Post 1/29/06:
    --Brian Barish is the president of Denver's Cambiar Investors, a value-oriented money-management company

    QUESTION: One of your hobbies is poker. What similarities do you see between poker and investing?

    ANSWER: You have to think like a poker player when you are involved in the stock market. If you think you have a hand that should win, like a full house, you bet hard. You make people pay to get lucky. Likewise with the market. I'm not going to be right 100 percent of the time, but there are some situations that I can't imagine I'd lose. If you really think you've got something big, you bet hard and you put on a big …
  • MarkMark
    Reply to @Ted: So in this case it comes down to a potential investor placing two bets, one on the guy that you're handing the money to hoping that he's good at what he does and the second is his bet that he's got it right. His track record depicted above suggests that his imagination fails him about 50% of the time. I dunno, Warren Buffett's two investing rules seem appropriate here. However, if you follow along with Pony Bob you may get it right.

    Question: how much of his own wealth is he betting with?
  • beebee
    edited January 2014
    Thanks so far for all the comments everyone. For those that aren't familiar with Mark's reference to Pony Bob, here's the link.

    Mutual Fund Leaderboard

    CAMAX is exhibiting high momemtum this week.

    If one was lucky enough to get into this fund just prior to one of it rocket shots upward it would make holding this fund easier to endure when it falls back to earth.

    Personally I see volatility as opportunity. Monitoring performance relative to a less volatile peer fund seems to help me identify periods of positive volatilty (a time to take profits) and periods of negative volatiity (a time to add to the position).
  • beebee
    Reply to @gk3105gklm: Nice fund performance. Thanks for mentioning it. ER is a bit higher than average. Interesting managers...more science than business backgounds. Bit more Mid/Sml/micro cap exposure especially in the healthcare and energy sector.
  • bnath001
    Reply to @gk3105gklm:

    The returns seems to be very nice. According to morningstar, it is at Higher risk.

    nath
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