This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Tilson Down 0.9% In February, Rebenchmarks Performance Index To Appear Better Than S&P
That Tilson's fund was down 0.9% in February is no surprise. After all the company's Qualified fund has underperformed the S&P since inception in 2004 (more on that in a second). After posting a gain in January, T2 is back to its losing ways (as a reminder the fund was down 20% in 2011, which means it has to post a well bigger than 20% return in 2012 to get above the high water mark). Tilson's performance is summarized as follows: "On the long side, winners included Citigroup (8.5%) and SanDisk (7.8%), offset by Netflix (-7.9%), Grupo Prisa (B shares) (-7.4%), and J.C. Penney (-4.7%). On the short side, we profited from First Solar (-23.6%), which just reported dismal earnings and guidance, Interoil (-10.4%), and Boyd Gaming (-8.7%). These gains were offset by Salesforce.com (22.6%), which is growing rapidly but trades at 8.7x revenues and has a $19.6 billion market cap despite being unprofitable. In addition, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which we think is likely to be the next Krispy Kreme (for those of you with long memories), rose 21.8%" And also "Since Berkshire reported earnings, the stock is actually down a bit so we took advantage and, though it was already our largest position, we added to it." All that is fine and well, but we have two questions. What is Tilson's, a self-professed "value investor" Sharpe Ratio? Judging by the monstrous volatility swings in its marginal positions, the fund is as much a value investor (read slow, stable rise), as a momo investor is the Queen of England. How long until the CME opens a triple levered (forward and inverse) ETF to take advantage of the already ridiculous monthly vol in the Tilson portfolio, whose Sharpe, just by eyeballing it, must be negative give or take.
And our second question is why did the fund switch from presenting the cumulative return comparison from its benchmark Qualified Fund, to its Accredited? Would it have something to do with the fact that Tilson Qualified investors (i.e., most of them), have underperformed the S&P since inception? Also, why did Tilson go ahead and retroactively change its letters to reflect this rebenchmarking? Are investors (if any) aware of this? Because luckily, we managed to save an old copy of Tilson's September performance letter. It differs quite dramatically from the one currently residing in the T2 database.
See if you can spot the difference:
Old...
At the end of the day, it's all about optics, as with every other "manager"
Full letter: save it before it too is mysteriously retroactively adjusted.
»
- 6091 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
They should change the disclosure to:
* Past Performance is not indicative of future revisions by skittle-shitting unicorns
He must be down to mostly friends and family that still trust him, but even Aunt Edna's trust will not last long with this behavior. She can overlook shitty performance, but lies like this are beyond blood.
Unsophisticated investors (probably not relatives) in his TILDX mutual fund are wishing that they just bought the DJIA for the last two years.
Sounds bullish !
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which we think is likely to be the next Krispy Kreme (for those of you with long memories)
Oh, please eleborate.
Their patent on k-cups expires this year. For a company that has a razor/razorblade business model, it's bad news.
Has salesforce ever been profitable???
What's a profit?
I was just wondering if they really are profitable...
Positive proof that Darwinism is alive and well in the investment community. Tilson and his investors are vying against each other for top ranking in the Darwin Awards. Who will be the winner? Will it be the guy that constantly demonstrates he is not worthy of handling anyone's money or the investors that stupidly continue to take this abuse?
Yeah I changed my mind about FSLR after the last earnings report, before I thought they were very undervalued. Now I think you can run that short all the way to 0 they're going out of business.
Shorting Salesforce is dangerous. Of course they are overvalued, but no one minds bidding something up as long as the momentum is there. And long NFLX is a bad call. There are plenty of stocks with equal upside and less risk.
how was it even possible to lose money in february, geez that guy is bad at what he does
When you're throwing darts, shit happens.
Law 41
Avoid stepping into a great man's shoes.
What exactly are you saying about this Harvard educated/CNBC correspondent, tyler?
I don't know of any credible value investors who use sharpe ratio as a measure. "Sharpe Ratio" was never mentioned in any edition of "Security Analysis", or by Warren Buffet (back when he sort of had half decent credibility) or by Peter Lynch. All serious value investors that I know of use the current average P/E or P/B or some similar derivation rather than some nonsensical "risk free investment" as a reference of comparison.
The number of standard deviations of return from US treasuries does not really tell you anything, although doing worse than treasuries must be embarrassing, especially since they were going to negative interest the last time I paid any attention.
sharp observations, but tough for this fund.
http://www.jinrongbaike.com/
http://www.cnhedge.com/
I have been on Whitney's email list for over 5 years now, and he ALWAYS sends out the Accredited Fund's letter, no matter how it is doing compared with his other funds. The reason is that the Accredited Fund is the oldest fund with the longest track record. You obtained, somehow, his Qualified Fund's letter and are now suggesting he's cherry picking which letter to send, which is absolutely not true.