Bookkeeping: 'Rising Tide' Performance Week 25

Week 25 performance of the mutual fund

Comments: After a terrible showing last week, we had a nice rebound this week and were able to make up some lost ground. Monday the markets here were closed, but world markets imploded. Premarket Tuesday was ugly ....we had what appeared to be a reversal day Tuesday, after a bad open (despite 'surprise' Fed cuts), but closed down "only" 1%ish. But then we had another ugly start to the day Wednesday... finally, later afternoon we got the true reversal with an intraday swing of 600 points on the Dow. Thursday was a nice day, but these rallies are short lived and Friday things started to sputter despite great earnings from bellweather Microsoft (MSFT).

This week the S&P 500 was up 0.4% and and Russell 2000 up 0.6%. After 2 poor weeks Rising Tide Growth Fund rebounded and finished up approximately 2.5%. (note: I do not know the exact closing price this week because my results do no reflect the 2:1 split in Foster Wheeler accurately - I believe an accurate reflection of Foster Wheeler value would add 0.2% to the fund's return, as the data is only showing half my position). So a return to winning ways after 2 sagging weeks. We have 1 more week to go before my 2nd Quarter closes, in week 26.

In terms of fund positioning, the intraday swings were enormous especially Tuesday and Wednesday. However, once the market found any sort of footing the majority of the fund holdings roared back, led especially by both fertilizer and coal. We did take a sizable hit in Apple (AAPL) however, as guidance was "not up to expectation". However, I do believe we are now within a bear market [S&P 500 in Worst Condition in Half a Decade] and until the technical condition on the indexes reverses I'll continue that stance... so I took this upswing as an opportunity to reposition the fund nearly to how I had it entering the month of January, and made large scale changes today (Friday) to the composition of weightings. I think many of the sectors that rallied best this week (financials, home builders, retail, etc) still have a lot more trouble ahead in the months to come, especially if my recessionary outlook comes true. I believe we have gotten used to short and shallow recessions and assume this one will be the same. But perhaps it won't be. There have been a LOT of government interventions, especially this week to try to help the market / economy. At some point that gets priced into the market, and the reality of what *is*, underneath the interventions, must be considered.

Price of Rising Tide Growth: $10.864*
Lifetime Performance to date (vs Aug 3, 2007): +8.64%*
(does not reflect true value of FWLT holdings)

Comparable S&P 500: 1,330.6 (-9.19%)
Comparable Russell 1000: 724.2 (-9.04%)

Fund return vs S&P 500: +17.83%
Fund return vs Russell 1000: +17.68%

Last week's results here.

Since the market cap of the median stock in the Rising Tide Growth fund (median $9.8 Billion as of November 07) is significantly below the SP500 index (median $13.1 Billion as of September 07) but higher than the median market cap in the Russell 1000 (median market cap $5.8 Billion as of September 07), I am measuring the fund against both indexes. Click here to see all fund's holdings as of mid November 2007.

Basis for indexes is 5 day weighted average of closing prices Aug 3-9
SP500 : 1,465.2
Russell 1000 : 796.2

To see why I use the 5 day weighted average of the first 5 trading days to smooth out the volatility of the indexes as the fund launched, see here.

Please click here: fund performance for previous updates