Comments on Fund My Mutual Fund: Bookkeeping: Rising Tide Growth Fund Performance

actually if you look at the graph linked to my per...

2007-12-23T19:39:00.000-05:00

actually if you look at the graph linked to my performance (hyperlink in left margin under Rising Tide Growth Fund) you can see what I am trying to explain in a picture form. I actually suffered worse than the market in mid August since I was chasing the market up and all of September and most of October I was only doing "par" with the market. If indeed your theory was true, then I should of been outperforming by buying at the "lows" in August. In fact, I didn't outperform until after October 9th (which is the date you used as the highs). What was happening the first 8 weeks of the fund was everything in the market either went up or down; there was very little discerning. Everything was bad or good. Then we had a 4 week period in October (before the November swoon) where the market was flattish to small trend down. That is where my outperformance began - in fact I was blogging about how this was "my" type of market finally: good stockpicking was rewarded, instead of every stock being beaten to a pulp or every stock rising like mad. Again, the chart clearly showed this. If indeed I started on October 9th, (which was the market peak) my performance would be even better because the first 7-8 weeks or so of the fund I only matched the market (see my orange line versus the indexes). I am speaking of relative performance of course (fund performance vs the indexes). "Everything" went up 10% from when I started to early October - me, the indexes, etc. Then after that is when the separation started.

could be, but truth be told I went into the market...

2007-12-23T19:31:00.000-05:00

could be, but truth be told I went into the market slowly. In hindsight if I started 4 days later everything would look better by 5%. That Friday the 3rd of August the market really was near its lowest point so that Monday morning I came in 100% cash of course, and the market rebounded within the week 4%+, so I missed almost all that gain since I was heavy into cash. Many stocks I was interested in ran away from me, making 10-15% type of rebounds. So I tried to ramp up quickly to get 100% allocated in case that was the bottom ... which turned out poorly since I had zero cash 2 weeks later when the market ultimately bottomed in mid August. So I actually suffered a lot the first 6-8 weeks since I had 100% cash on that first run up (early August) then I tried to make up for it by jumping in around a week later, only to be left with no cash to buy at the absolute bottom. A lot of position I bought around day 10-12, fell 10-15% in short order by Aug 16th but I did not have cash free to buy them at that point.

Either way, it will come out in the wash. I would of preferred to start in late February to be blunt as that was the yearly low. As you can see my 1 month and 3 month numbers are actually far better (relatively speaking) than the August numbers, since month 1 was so topsy turvy and the market was so volatile and I was getting my bearings. Going from zero to trying to get the allocations you want is difficult on the front end. The outperformance didn't start until about week 8 or so. So the start date didn't help since the fund really didn't take off until near end of month 2.

In hind sight, wasn't it a great time to launch th...

2007-12-22T18:02:00.000-05:00

In hind sight, wasn't it a great time to launch the Fund? You were buying from launch until the 16th when everything was headed down and you likely got some good stocks well below their 52 wk highs and at good discounts...probably a rough two weeks as far as your performance in the beginning but now a few months later it was probably the best time to be allocating all of your cash in mid August -- much better than if you had launched 2 months later near the October 9th highs when you would have been paying a premium.