I know I can't stand this guy on the teevee since by some miracle he is always on the right side of the trade. Gartman fund needs less talk, more action The fund launch was well-timed, coming as it did just as stocks were about to start one of the greatest runs of all time. Mr. Gartman's investors, though, are down. The units, sold to investors for $10 a few months ago, closed at $9.12 on Friday, giving the ETF a market cap of about $52.5-million. Now, we have to be fair: For starters, about 50 cents of the purchase price was eaten up in underwriting fees. We can't blame Mr. Gartman for that. And the net asset value of the fund is, as of the most recent calculation, $9.35. So while investors are down about 9 per cent, Mr. Gartman's picks have only cost them 3 per cent. But the market is up 30 per cent since the fund launched. What's up with that? Mr. Gartman didn't get back to me, but the people at Horizons AlphaPro tell me the fund is intended to be market neutral, meaning it won't move with the market. Why? Because it's long and short, and supposedly constructed in such a way that the market's performance has no net effect on the returns. The only thing that does have an effect, in theory, is the manager's skill. It may be early days, but Mr. Gartman's performance has been found wanting. ............... Maybe the most telling anecdote is this: In the early days of launching his fund, Mr. Gartman had the brilliant idea to short Berkshire Hathaway, and short it hard: almost 10 per cent of the fund's value. By the end of October, he had closed off that trade (Mr. Gartman's rule No. 1: Never, ever, ever, under any circumstance, add to a losing position ... ever!). Berkshire, run by that "idiot" Warren Buffett, is up 17 per cent since the Gartman fund launched. -------- Awesome.
Gartman has been long the big name stocks and short the broader market in equal units, but net short not too long ago. He's also long gold and some other commodities. He seems to be a smart guy but time will tell.