Ann: Watermark to withdraw from global equities, page-4

Yes, the lack of direction is concerning. I attended the Melbourne shareholder meeting only a couple of months ago and Justin mentioned on at least a couple of occasions how he had decided to stick to his specialty (?!?), being Australian equities whilst handing over the reigns of the International component to Harvey Migotti. Looks like it's now "goodbye Harvey"....... And after only recently reducing their International exposure to 20%, seems like its being reduced further to zero.
They really need to work out where their strengths lie, adopt a philosophy and then stick with it long enough to see it through. This chopping and changing......
Although AEG seem to be quite good at having pairs of long / shorts in the same sector, I suspect ALF are all over the shop. Last FY their shorts went up 12.2% (!), eroding just about all of the profits of the longs.
Given that most stocks tend to go up eventually over the long term, I think I'd be more comfortable with an approach that had more money invested in their longs than shorts, rather than what ALF have been doing for a while (about 50/50). Especially if they can't get their shorts anywhere near right.
I suspect there are many worse off than me with ALF, having bought in last year for $1.02, thinking that they'd have to improve, but JB and his crew have not given me any reassurance that this was a good move.