Phillip, to be fair to Justin, and this will probably be the only time I stick up for him, his performance shouldnt be dependant on one good short ! Hes just not that good ! If he cant pick the overall direction of the market over a period of 18 months, how the hell is he going to pick one decent short ? And the management of the fund shouldnt rely on that ! If he drew a simple moving average line over the all ords and the US market over the last 18 months, the trend would have been up. But he has positioned the fund that only in the case of a catastrophic economic collapse would the fund make any headway, and even if that occurred we still couldnt be guaranteed that his strategy would succeed. A good long stock picker can make many times the value of a good share ie, a two, three or four bagger, while shorting a stock that goes to absolute ZERO (like BIG, MAY do) the most you can make is the value of the share.
The problem as I see it, is that Justin is not only too inflexible to (say) take your advice (which I would have to concede is risky for a fund manager) but is so convinced of his own infallibility and opinion about the direction of the market, that he has refused to revise his strategy and has us stuck in a holding pattern, completely failing to take advantage of the generally rising market. I agree with you that it is extremely frustrating to have a fund manager supposedly “managing” our money and being paid handsomely to do so, while having head stuck firmly in the sand seemingly ignoring the trend. While Justin is the fund manager, I cant see the fund going anywhere much at all; and as long as Justin has his head in the sand, he wont be able to either !!!
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