Comments on Fund My Mutual Fund: Performance / Portfolio

I really appreciate your post. It gives an outstan...

2011-06-20T03:32:25.923-04:00

I really appreciate your post. It gives an outstanding idea that is very helpful for all the people on the web. Thanks for sharing this information and I’ll love to read your next post too.
Regards:
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JS I am putting the updates on the tab called FUND...

2011-03-10T09:19:42.197-05:00

JS I am putting the updates on the tab called FUND FAQ/PLEDGES. One to the right of this tab across the top of page. But I will do a post more often now in the body as well since we're getting closer. I just have nothing to report right now since I'm waiting for some response from SEC.

Jan 7, 2009 is the date I created this page - has nothing to do with anything else. Thanks

Can you change the date on the top of this page to...

2011-03-10T09:13:57.860-05:00

Can you change the date on the top of this page to whenever you update a comment in regards the fund launch? And can you make a comment at least once every week or two at this point describing progress, efforts, or feedback in regards the launch? Even if it's just "still waiting". I check every day to see if there's any update, and I always see January 7, 2009 at the top of this page. It'd help to see those changes to the top of this page performance/portfolio page OR the fund faq page - or maybe a new "fund launch status" page. Thanks.

looks like a post raising some very important and ...

2011-01-11T12:33:18.705-05:00

looks like a post raising some very important and critical points about performance was removed....

And what I told you is I never traded with a portf...

2010-12-26T23:42:51.292-05:00

And what I told you is I never traded with a portfolio of 25 or 30 stocks in my portfolio like I do here. So there is no apple to apple comparison. You can see how I did in Jan Feb 09 clearly above which is the last great crash period.

To someone from the outside they do not understand the concept of this being important to me as I've devoted nearly 4 years to it. So when you say you would like to see real emotion all I can say is try to do something for that many years knowing it is out in publiv and if you screw up it is on full display to everyone. Further if you fail or do poorly you wasted those years and your professional goal is down the drain. Now maybe you think that means less than losing 40,000 real dollars but not in my world. There is no answer I am going to give you that will suffice so I would just recommend to watch my performance the n ext crash and how I do versus the market and versus peers. That will be the only true judge for your questions. Trust me I gave up a lot of money and opportunity to do this so I had emotion each day living and dying with the portfolio knowing it is make or break for what I want to do in my career.

That doesn't really answer my question, what I...

2010-12-26T22:40:36.335-05:00

That doesn't really answer my question, what I am trying to find out is your past performance in your own trading account with real money on the line.
In the past I have read, heard about how people develope a trading system an so fouth, testing the system with paper trades. That doesn't mean it will work once you put serious money to work, emotions will kick in fear and greed will get the best of most people.
As your early post you already said you crash and burn in 2000 I would like to see how you handle major market swings that occur after that or did you trade at all during those times. Anyone can make money when the market is on the way up. It is what you do when is is on the way down is what counts.

Short answer, enough to undertake the very expensi...

2010-12-24T06:57:54.457-05:00

Short answer, enough to undertake the very expensive route of opening a fund

Long answer I have been involved with equities since 96..before that mutual funds so I haven not been a trader for 20+ years ..just involved in the market. And I learned and lost a lot along the way especially in 2000. Frankly I was learning for most of the years and testing things and some years not involved so much due to career (I did not work on wall street and had a normal career so was not in front of a trading desk all day) After making a big chunk in 99 and giving it all back in 00 I spent more time studying the market than trading for next 2 yrs and then began experimenting with everything from daytrading to penny stocks to buy and hold for a few years before I found something that fit me. Many times I did not have a trade for 4 or 5 months in other years...just was busy with my old career. But what I did in this platform is different than how I traded as well since I only was holding 4 or 6 positions most of the time. And I have been out of the market the majority of the past few years since I decided I needed to focus on my model portfolio and gave up personal gains so that I could focus solely on my" resume" if you will. (As an aside being single I was maxxing out a 401k most of these years and bought a house on relatively modest salaries so once you put 15%+ of salary into long term kitty and pay for all of lifes needs there is not a ton to put into trading accounts)

BTW I wand to ask how is your performance in your ...

2010-12-23T21:13:44.135-05:00

BTW I wand to ask how is your performance in your own trading account? Somewhere in the tread you mention that you have been trading for 20 + years, just wanted to know what kind of wealth did you accumulated from trading

(part 2) #5 - I never did annualized 100%. #6 -...

2010-12-22T19:13:49.196-05:00

(part 2)

#5 - I never did annualized 100%.

#6 - people seem to be missing the forest for the trees on the strategy. I understand the excitement about the big gains in 09, 10 but I did about 0% in 9ish months in 2008. Verus the market's -35% or whatever in that time frame. (I was out of the any portfolio Oct-Dec 2008 fed up with Marketocracy and my inability to log in on some days) Bigger picture this stategy is supposed to protect during downside. It should outperform during downterns and due to that not require huge gains during upside (since my drawdowns will be less than the market) to create a very nice long term return. I think people are infatuated with 2009 and 2010 and not seeing the big picture of how the fund will outperform in the long run. I want an absolute return strategy with some pizazz. 2009 was a great year for the market overall, and I happened to catch a lot of it and created some extra alpha with options. 2010, my timing was great as I caught some of the swift moves down, and then was able to turn on a dime and catch the moves back up in a relatively flattish year. Maybe I can pull that off again, or not - that was mostly trading skill. But the value of this strategy will come during the next bear market. I don't think people see this.

#7 - I did catch a lot of big moves. I ran a screen of the 30 best performers YTD through end of October 2010 (in $300M market cap and higher) and the fund held 7-8 of them. Was I in a 8% allocation in any of them? No - but I had a lot of the mega winners of 2010 such as LVS, RVBD, FFIV, PCLN, NFLX, CRM. Other times I flipped a named like Silver Wheaton (SLW) for a 20-30% gain in a few weeks. That all adds up. Key is I did not take any huge losses in 2010. I had no real earning blow ups in any major positions - etc. But to say I did not have any 100% winners is inaccurate. I carried a lot of the generals of the market through much of the year. Frankly if I started tomorrow I would have a lot more trouble finding such names because all my favorite names have run up 200-300%, with some up 40-60% since late August. But that was not the case at beginning 2010, or 2009. There were a lot of tailwinds.

That's really the best I can answer your concerns at this time.

First, thanks for the respectful tone of your comm...

2010-12-22T19:12:16.684-05:00

First, thanks for the respectful tone of your comments/concerns - unlike a few others in the stream. Let me address the line items you brought up. (I can't answer all in 1 comment due to length restrictions so this is part 1)

#1 - I would love to give you logs or post them on the site. Investopedia.com does not have them and indeed does not even have historical NAV past 1 month - they do a data dump (purge) [I asked for such data]. I did the best with what I had available to me - indeed the first system I used (marketocracy.com) did not have shorting available concurrent with a long portfolio (either you could build a short only or a long only) and no option availability. I also had many days I could not even log in. So these systems are not perfect, and Investopedia was a huge improvement over Marketocracy, but does it have everything I wished? Not close. But that was not the design. In the time since I started this journey a few sites such as Kaching (which has changed its name) and Covestor now are doing more of the things I set out to do - I would have probably gone down that route if the landscape was different and indeed I could have made alot of money trading people's accounts while I built up towards the fund. But I did the best with what I had and what was available - if someone wants to code a more rigorous free system that has sharpe ratios and keeps all data for years on end I would encourage that - but I did not have that available.

#2 - This strategy will never work at $5B and I have stated so repeatedly. This fund will need to be closed at some dollar amount. If that is $400M or $750M or where I don't know. But it won't work for reasons you mentioned in a mega sized fund. I have other ideas for larger funds but it won't be exactly like this and the original fund (if it ever is successful in attracting a good number of assets) will eventually close to investors. I don't know the point, but when I see it, I'll know.

#3 - when you see a 0.4% trade that is usually the last vesige of a larger position. i.e. it might have started out as a 3.1% position, been cut down to 2.1%, cut down to 1.3% cut down to 0.3% and then I sat and waited to see if the stock would pull back so I could buy back in. If not, I held the 0.3% and maybe dumped that last batch. Often I held 0.1% positions the same way - that does not mean I carried around 0.1% positions all the time for 'trading' - they were residual positions left over.

#4 - the variance is most likely due to the SPY options I traded. Those are those most liquid options we have but again going to point #2 - there will be a limit to what size I can go to fund wise, where I can apply 3-4% of the portfolio to intraday trades which is what I did here. Since these were not long term positions I ALWAYS posted the intraday gains on the website and OFTEN posted a screen capture of those gains on the website, so when my NAV jumped people could see why. You can look through some of the option sales and see +38% or +45% as I cut and paste the actual screen shot out of the portfolio so people could understand why with a portfolio of 50% cash I was able to move my portfolio +1.9% that week. Again, wish I had a log or data dump but that was the best I could do - everything is 3rd party the NAV is completely out of my hands. I only created an excel chart and every 4 weeks dumped in the value of the NAV, and compared it to the previous 4 weeks, etc.

I think I would need to see detailed trade logs of...

2010-12-22T18:16:48.752-05:00

I think I would need to see detailed trade logs of each trade to be comfortable investing in your fund. I am not trying to be negative but your returns, which are quite impressive, don't seem to match with what you post. I can't remember having seen you talk about any position larger than a few percent and I rarely see your stocks double or triple from when you say you bought in. I am sure you have skill and love the blog but I am sure that investors will want to see record of these intraday options trades that seem to make up the majority of your returns before investing. Not to mention that as soon as you raise more than a $3-4m you will have serious problems putting that capital to work intraday in options without moving the options prices big time.

Again, I love the blog and enjoy following you but I've been reading the blog now since you started it and just can't seem to reconcile your comments like "heavily in cash" or "closed out this position that was 0.4% of capital" with your very high returns. I can't remember having ever seen you go out on a limb with a position you stated as large and then having it move hugely for you as would be required to put up 100% annual returns without leverage. It would be great to see that to calm my doubts as I look forward to the day you're managing $5b and crushing all these retarded mutual fund managers who do nothing but leech fees and steal. Would be great to see a real performance driven trader enter the mutual fund industry and take everyone's lunch money.

my picks : sina, pay, atml I only hold 3 stocks. ...

2010-12-09T21:32:35.623-05:00

my picks : sina, pay, atml
I only hold 3 stocks. I don't need to hold 8 stocks

Let me know which 8 stocks shall return 50-200% in...

2010-12-08T20:24:14.833-05:00

Let me know which 8 stocks shall return 50-200% in 2011, and I'll be happy to only hold them and not slow myself down with losers that only go up 34% for example.

Also a mutual fund has to own more than 8 stocks.

I will offer the service of a fund for the poor souls who do not have the foresight (such as yourself) of picking 8 of the best 30 stocks each year.

Indeed if you can offer me each Dec 31st the 8 stocks that will crush the market, I'd happily pay for that service. My email is in the to right or feel free to list them in your next comment so we can all see them, and we'll come back Dec 31, 2011 and celebrate.

I don't believe in fund management. I think y...

2010-12-08T20:15:10.502-05:00

I don't believe in fund management. I think your new fund won't perform as your past records , because you are trading in a very small account.
Also I see some very small positions in your portfolio for example 100 LVS. It looks very funny for me. Because it has no significant for your portfolio performance.
Also you short 1 stock and long 20 stocks looks strange too. If you are holding 20 stocks, this means your are bullish about the market. So shorting 1 stock is really a conflicting trade and it is unnecessary. For a small account that you are trading now, holding 20 stock is over kill. Diversification with more then 8 stocks is unnecessary.
This theory of diversification has been proved in a book I read 20 years ago.
In 2010 alot stock has 50-200 % return. So your performance arround 50% is good , but not difficult to reach by just buy and hold few stocks for 9-12 months.
Some good example is some of your holdings BIDU and RVBD.

I am relatively ambivalent about it. If someone h...

2010-11-29T22:48:31.367-05:00

I am relatively ambivalent about it. If someone has an existing brokerage account that is the way to go. If someone needs to open a new account I think it saves me a little on fees if they open direct but big picture it is about convenience for the investor. Less paperwork each month in the mail is the best option.

I wonder how many of us (readers) are waiting in t...

2010-11-29T22:43:53.367-05:00

I wonder how many of us (readers) are waiting in the closet? Just waiting for a ticker symbol... I may have some funds to throw your way via eTrade or Scottrade once it's finally official. Or would you rather we subscribe directly thru your fund management company?

Yes it is. I had that question before, all I do i...

2010-11-29T20:10:58.104-05:00

Yes it is. I had that question before, all I do is simply take the total account value every 4 weeks and use that as my effective NAV.

I hold a lot of cash but every few weeks (depending on market) I'll take a portion and make some strategic trades on very short term index options (using SPY) and/or index ETFs like TNA and BGU (or their opposite) either in the same direction as my core portfolio OR as a hedge the other way. So I may move 5% of the portfolio for the afternoon into SPY calls and I might make 25% ... I sell and quickly go back to cash and that's how I've helped performance around the edges while maintaining core positions.

So it's an all in number.

Hi Mark, This year looks to be another big winner...

2010-11-29T18:31:14.309-05:00

Hi Mark,

This year looks to be another big winner for the portfolio.

I see where you have a large cash position currently. With the 2010 portfolio performance around 74% ytd, does this percentage gain account for the TOTAL cash and stocks bought and sold or just stocks bought and sold?

Thanks!

I’m not financial expert, but in general I’ve lost...

2010-11-11T14:21:27.134-05:00

I’m not financial expert, but in general I’ve lost faith in anyone else’s ability to manage my money better than I can. Most mutual funds charge fees and under perform. There is a lack of transparency. So I got into stocks over a decade ago and am now also using long term options. I look at fundamentals and often do the opposite of what analysts recommend (like sell BP at $27) and generally do well, better than benchmarks, because of it. . . but not nearly as well as you.

Mark, your transparent performance based approach is a breath of fresh air. Your quantitative approach is refreshing. If you start playing with real money, please let me know.

James Wood
Scientist

I am very impressed with this site. keep up the go...

2010-10-28T21:23:57.570-04:00

I am very impressed with this site.
keep up the good work.

2009 is all contained in the top excel chart. I s...

2010-09-22T18:34:26.536-04:00

2009 is all contained in the top excel chart. I switched from 1 service to another in late fall 08 until jan 09 so I don't have any official record of that time. I continued to do individual trades but was frustrated with inability to short individual equities so I was using that time trying to find someplace new I could do it. Oct 08 was a down month for the mkt then Nov and Dec were up on the Obama hopes. I was sort of in purgatory at the time and wish all my record was in 1 spot since from Aug 07 to Aug 08 I had a top tier record despite only able to do part of my strategy.

Great performance. I can't seem to find perfor...

2010-09-22T18:27:09.661-04:00

Great performance. I can't seem to find performance data from Aug '08 to Mar '09. Could you point me in the right direction. Thanks. Keep up the good work.

Looking forward to your launch, Mark. Have follow...

2010-09-13T18:46:31.009-04:00

Looking forward to your launch, Mark. Have followed your words and deeds since mid 2009. I am impressed, and more importantly, from what I have been able to garner I trust you. My pledge? I am truly hoping that can happen soon.

"where"? It will be available in some o...

2010-08-31T08:27:34.784-04:00

"where"? It will be available in some of the main brokerages like Etrade, Ameritrade, Scottrade... also you will be able to open a stand alone account. Schwab and Fidelity are a no go, and then everyone else is one offs with the smaller brokers that I need to find out about. I have requests in with quite a few, still awaiting responses.

So where are you going to have a fund that regular...

2010-08-30T20:52:20.494-04:00

So where are you going to have a fund that regular investor can get in on that is publicly traded?