Anti-Tilson ETF Basket Leads The Way Early In 2012
So why are investors willing to pay the industry standard 2 and 20 to underperform when they can show hedge fund like returns with zero management fees? That, is a good question…
The most popular talking-head on financial TV (after Bill Miller and Byron Wien), Whitney Tilson, has not had a winning year so far. In fact the simple pair trade Anti-Tilson (Long GMCR-Short Netflix which we closed when it returned 50% in just over a month), that was so popular last year, has been expanded to include his biggest shorts (as we promised yesterday). While we do not know weightings (obviously), on an equal-weighted basis from today’s price, Tilson’s 10 largest shorts have managed an impressive 7.37% gain on the year, handily outperforming his 15 largest longs which have managed a sub-market performance gain year-to-date of 1.45%. So being long Whitney’s shorts and short the-ever-smiling manager’s longs (on an equal weighted basis) would have made you around 6% year-to-date – considerably better than the +2.5% move in the S&P itself.
via Anti-Tilson ETF Basket Leads The Way Early In 2012 | ZeroHedge.