Dec 16, 2015

…Call it “the year of mimicking dangerously.”, says Jason Zweig, Wall Street Journal columnist and author of the Intelligent investor.

A handful of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds seek to emulate such leading investors as hedge-fund manager William Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management. Zweig points out that most of these funds are down 5% or more for 2015, and some have lost at least 10% over the past three months as the embattled drug company Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, and other holdings of top investors have tumbled.

AlphaClone Alternative Alpha, for example, is a $143 million ETF that selects at least 20 hedge funds it believes to be especially skillful and builds a portfolio of about 75 stocks from among their top holdings.

Unfortunately, Valeant had grown to be the fund’s largest holding, at 7% of assets. At the end of September the fund’s hedging formula kicked in — right before the S&P 500 shot straight up the following month. October was the worst of both worlds for the fund as it captured Valeant’s 47.4% decline but missed out on the stock market’s 8.4% gain.

Steve and Sinclair review "clone" hedge funds in Segment 2. In the Q & A Segment, CFP Murray Titterington with IQ Wealth shares views on income planning from well known financial writer and professor, Michael Finke.