Bookkeeping: 'Rising Tide' Performance Week 30

Week 30 performance of the mutual fund

Comments: This week summarized the market over the past month and half quite perfectly. Direction-less. Volatile. Completely bipolar. After a huge rally last Friday in the last 30 minutes, the markets started slow this week but then did another huge parabolic rally on S&P confirming the AAA status of the bond insurers (it is quite laughable that companies in need of a bailout and who have to offer 14% for someone to buy their bond issuances are rated the same as GE or Berkshire Hathaway, but I digress). The market could care less about those details, and economic report after economic report about how badly things are degrading....good feelings of warmth covered the bulls. It continued Tuesday as S&P 500 level of 1370 was finally breached, as more bad economic news was laughed off - and Wednesday as more bad news was smothered under a pillow, we seemed poised to break out; you could hear the trumpets playing in the distance... then Ben came on TV and actually was half way honest about the situation and people said "this is not the company line, what is going on here?". But more importantly, the 50 day moving average of 1390 was not able to be broken. Yet another rally was revealed as nothing more than shorts forced to cover as CNBC breathlessly reported about bond bailout after buyout rumor after political bailout. No real buying after all. Then Thursday and Friday we went back to the bottom of our endless ping pong range. And the whines for Fed cuts began anew. Some things never change.

I've been positioned to try to be as neutral as possible... realizing I'd be trailing if the market shot up quickly Which happened in the last 30 minutes last Friday and Monday and Tuesday of this week. Honestly, I was not really sure what exactly was moving the averages so strongly because aside from a few retailers and homebuilders not much that exists on my watch lists were making strong moves early in the week. But my short exposure worked against me during the Kool Aid drinking sessions early in the week. However, staying consistent with these positions and not bailing out on them (which any good CNBC viewer would of done after hearing the Hosannas early in the week), helped out later in the week. Most of my positions really did not do much this week, it was more about asset allocation. High cash positions and short exposure held me back early in the week, but got me ahead of the market during the latter part of the week. Considering I took two high profile hits with 5% of my portfolio (3% with Foster Wheeler, and 2% with Thornburg Mortgage), and after really lagging the indexes early this week, I am very content with the final result of the week.

I did spend most of Friday throwing aside short exposure and dropped the allocation about 10%, going from low 20%s to low teens. Cash is back up to 19%, and I have about 10% in commodities from the crops to gold to a sliver of silver. So I am still not that hot on equities, BUT we are at the bottom of our "range". (until the range breaks of course) I still have the same problem I've had for a few weeks now. Most of my favorite names have had huge runs and are due for a pullback, and other names of interest have terrible charts. So there are not many areas to apply money, although I picked at spots here and there. Overall, my position remains the same it has been for a long while now. Sitting as neutral as possible (for a long biased mutual fund at least), waiting for a clear direction of the market. Frankly it is quite pathetic to see the market rally on the same news/hopes week after week, but it is like waiting out a 4 year old child who insists on an alternative view of reality. So I'm trying to remain patient. As stated earlier, if we break down past technical resistance I plan to apply this cash right back into heavy short exposure to hedge the long exposure.

The S&P 500 lost 1.7% and Russell 1000 lost 1.6% this week. Rising Tide Growth Fund was flat for the week.

Price of Rising Tide Growth: $11.341
Lifetime Performance to date (vs Aug 3, 2007): +13.41%

Comparable S&P 500: 1,330.63 (-9.18%)
Comparable Russell 1000: 726.46 (-8.76%)

Fund return vs S&P 500: +22.59%
Fund return vs Russell 1000: +22.17%

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 January 2008.

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