| Title: | Market Investing |
| Moderator: | 2155::michaud |
| Created: | Thu Jan 23 1992 |
| Last Modified: | Thu Jun 05 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1060 |
| Total number of notes: | 10477 |
I'm interested in learning more about Short Funds. Are such funds available to the small investor? If one believed that a market correction were about to occur, wouldn't a shorting strategy (thus a short fund to spread the risk a bit) be a way to make money on a, say, 10-20% market correction? I've read about short funds in the WSJ, but they seemed to be for those with millions to invest rather than thousands. Anyone have any info/experience? Thanks, John Piekos
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 514.1 | VMSDEV::HALLYB | Fish have no concept of fire | Thu Jul 01 1993 11:59 | 27 | |
Choices have been historically quite limited due to the SEC's desire to
"protect" you. I've yet to see a public mutual fund that has succeeded
in holding an outright short position.
You can sell short some Dreyfus and Fidelity funds, which is not the
same as buying funds that sell short. Specifically: Dreyfus Strategic
World Investing, Dreyfus Global Investing, Fidelity New Millenium and
others I forget. Fido has flip-flopped on shorting funds in the past,
right now it's "on" again. Some phone numbers are 718-896-1206 for
Dreyfus and 617-570-5900 for Fido. The "800" equivalents are surely
somewhere in this conference
Once I tried to short a Fido fund but had a bad experience. Despite
the required uptick in fund pricing I didn't get an order filled.
It took a lot of effort before the FidoReps finally told me that they
"Didn't have any shares available for shorting". Which sounds like
a lot of BS, I don't think Fido was honest with me on that.
If you anticipate a repeat of 1973/1974 then you might want to look
into the Robertson Stephens Contrarian Fund, 800-766-3863. They claim
they will allocate their assets in 50% long gold-related shares, 25%
real estate and 25% short of "overvalued cult stocks". At least, they
claim that's their model; I'd be interested in hearing if they actually
get the go-ahead to publicly run that way (they were scheduled open on
June 29th).
John
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| 514.2 | NAC::HEERMANCE | Belly Aching on an Empty Stomach | Fri Jul 02 1993 15:19 | 10 | |
I called up Steven's Contrarian and they're going to send me
information on the fund. Their fund minimum is $5000, they
don't have a sales or redeption charge, but they have a high
management fee around 3/4%.
Does anyone know the current position for Fidelity's Contra
fund? I know they have a 3% load so I've tended to stay
away from their funds.
Martin
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| 514.3 | DSSDEV::PIEKOS | Zoo TV | Fri Jul 02 1993 18:17 | 4 | |
.75% isn't that high of a management fee. I believe the average for mutual funds is around 1.5%. John Piekos | |||||
| 514.4 | Spinoffs from Rushmore | VMSDEV::HALLYB | Fish have no concept of fire | Tue Nov 30 1993 14:41 | 17 |
| 514.5 | More on Expense Ratio of R.S.Contrarian | POBOX::PATEL | Mon Dec 20 1993 16:21 | 13 | |
Regarding 514.2 which talked about high management fees.
Actually I read somewhere that they have a high "Total Expense Ratio"
which includes the management fee + expenses + 12(b)-1 fees. I think
it is 'cause they are going to be doing quite a bit of trading based on
their econometric/asset_allocation models.
Expense ratios etc are worth keeping in mind for the selection of a
fund if you have many funds to choose from (in that category); But I
would not focus on them.
KP
primary focus on"
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