GoodHaven - Annual Report - 2015

[formthirteen]

GoodHaven's performance was -17.49% in 2015. 2015 was a difficult year for value investors who invested in highly-leveraged and commodities-related companies.

 

In our decades of experience managing money, 2015 was one of the most

difficult years. While it was a very tough year for many well-known “value”

investors, we are chagrined by our performance and understand that the last eighteen

months have caused a loss of goodwill in the eyes of our shareholders after a solid

first three years (and decades of experience at prior firms). In many ways, it was a

“perfect storm” with outlier percentage declines in certain commodities and

extraordinary strength in the U.S. dollar.

http://www.goodhavenfunds.com/media/pdfs/2015_AR.pdf

[Guest]

It's a shame 2015 was such a bad year. They were outperformed by 98% of other funds in their category.

 

At least 2014 was better..wait, they were outperformed by 99% of other funds in their category.

 

At least 2013 was better...only 93% of their peers outperformed!

 

In all fairness, 2012 was pretty good for them.

[muscleman]

How did they get so much capital to invest given the past 4 years of poor performance?

[Jurgis]

How did they get so much capital to invest given the past 4 years of poor performance?

 

That question can be asked about a lot of places...  ::)

[Guest]

How did they get so much capital to invest given the past 4 years of poor performance?

 

I think a few different reasons for that.

 

- Experience with Fairholme. When you come from a firm that is one of the best in the last decade (at the time they opened the fund), it helps a lot.

- They had a pretty good first year. Top 5% in their first full calendar yer.

- It's not too hard to build assets when you have a mutual fund. The average person can buy in. They had a good amount more in AUM before the last year or two.

 

[racemize]

I'm restricted from managing my own 401k, and these guys are available.  I'm sure hoping their bets work out, because I should have indexed instead of going with value funds...  Of course, now seems the absolute worst time to switch it to indexing, but I'll probably regret it.