If you thought that the 3rd quarter was tough for Energy, well, extrapolate that quarter onto a full year and you will understand how the Financials have done. They've been beaten down time and time again this year. Every time they'd try to rally back up, they'd get knocked back down. To a large extent this had been a non-discriminatory beatdown, although high-quality institutions, however discounted they may be now, have still faired much better than the likes of Citigroup and my personal favorite, AIG. Here I will detail the performance of the virtual mutual fund I've set up for the Financial sector on the Marketocracy web site.
Orange line in the chart below shows how my Financial Fund has performed relative to the m100 (a collective Marketocracy fund that uses picks from the top 100 members), S&P 500, Dow Jones Index, and Nasdaq.
Below is this fund's ranking:
As you can see above, overall performance has been pretty dismal. Of course, 1-month performances for the months of June and September are rather curious freaks of nature. I would venture to say that 2nd quarter's 1.4th percentile ranking set me up for the September's 98th percentile and 3rd quarter's 88.3rd percentile rankings. Very interesting. What's my prediction for the 4th quarter? Just like everything else, financials will rise up towards the end of the year, but whether they'll recover from the new lows they'll make in the 4th quarter is anyone's guess.
Here is a list of all the stocks currently in the fund and how they've performed up to this point:
I've pretty much stuck to the original picks, so turnover is only 20.4% for this fund. I will probably do some house cleaning in the 4th quarter to set up this fund for the 2009 investing year. Below are brief profiles of the stocks currently in the fund. I intend to post more details and expectations for this fund's holdings as well as for my other funds.
Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) - This diversified holding company owns and operates more than 70 businesses and also invests widely in undervalued equities and bonds.
