Friday, June 7, 2013

It's got a certain...ration-ality

The Efficient Markets Theory has even hit Omaha (according to Kirsten Grind of the Wall Street Journal) and one of its stock pickers--no, not the most famous personality there--is feeling it;
OMAHA, Neb.—Wally Weitz may be only the second-best-known investor in Omaha. But like Warren Buffett, he has long churned out gains by sticking to a basic formula: Buy strong companies whose shares are down and wait patiently for a rebound.
Over three years, his Weitz Value mutual fund has outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index by an average of about one percentage point a year and beat about 90% of similar stock funds.
Investors aren't impressed. In that time, they pulled about $400 million more out of the fund than they put in.
For the simple reason that Weitz charges fees for his services and most investors have finally discovered that those fees don't pay for themselves.  Instead they put their money in low fee index funds or ETFs (exchange traded funds).
 Weitz Value charges investors 1.2% of their money, and another Weitz fund charges 1.85%. The cost at stock index funds and ETFs can go as low as 0.04%.
There's your 1%, and it costs as much as 1.85%! Sager in Omaha?

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