October was an ugly month, not way to spin it. The S&P 500 experienced its biggest monthly decline in 21 years (since 1987). And many, many mutual funds are down well in excess of the market this year.
For
October, I have 3 funds that bucked the weakness and were up for the month:
- Rydex Managed Futures (+10.2%)
- Nakoma Absolute Return (+3.7%)
- Caldwell & Orkin Mkt Opportunity (+2.86%)
But only the Rydex fund is higher for the full year to date (+10.5%)
Among the worst performing funds on my list are:
- Ivy Global Nat. Resources (-33.7%)
- Winslow Green Growth (-32.4%)
- CGM Focus (-29.8%)
The one that surprises me here is CGMFX. Ken Heebner has an excellent track record, and is a very good manager. But with a mandate that allows him to short, I have to wonder why he didn't have more shorts on to offset some of his long exposure?
Among the sector ETFs that I follow, none were higher in October. The SPDR Regional Bank ETF (KRE) was down the least, at -7.3%. And the Market Vectors Gold ETF (GDX) was down the most, -38.0%.
Ditto for the International ETFs. There were all down materially in October, with Japan (EWJ) down the least (-15.6%), and Russia (RSX) down the most (-34.6%). Ugly.
These declines took the market down to deeply oversold levels. While volatility could remain higher than normal, I do expect the market to fare better in the last 2 months of the year.
long CGMFX, RYMFX
