It's all going Pair shaped!

So, reading a free copy of Forbes a couple of weeks ago, I came across an article on the "Oracle of Manitoba" himself, Randolph McDuff.

Who?

Exactly! He's "the best stock picker the world has never heard of"... with an eight year compound annual growth of 36%... vs 1.1% for the S&P500 (and 11% for Buffett's Berkshire.)

Sadly, it's all imaginary... but in a trackable form via Marketocracy, a pretty realistic online portfolio management site which I had never heard of, and subsequently looked up (and compared with similar offerings.)

Not sure if I will be the Oracle of Anywhere, but I am toying with running a long and a short fund (Marketocracy doesn't -yet?- allow combined long-short funds for some reason) based on fundamental pairs in Asian (non-Japan) ADRs on a medium term horizon. Based on what actually trades in reasonable volume, that's a universe of about 70 counters, of which less than a fifth have a market cap of under a billion bucks.

(IF I can work out how it all works - a bit of a struggle with the short book orders last week!)

Pairs I am working on at the moment for a portfolio startup position - ie likely to be adjusted faster than my planned steady state 3-9 month holding period going forward:

• +SINA -SNDA,NTES
• +VISN/-AMCN (careful --- corporate action)
• +CEA/-ZNH (careful --- corporate action)
  
• +CHU/ -CN
• +KTC/ -SKM,KEP

Thinking is to be broadly market neutral on a beta adjusted basis (+/- 15%, occasionally wider), but with scope to take directional bets on the pair net positions themselves.

No trades on yet (see above), but will keep you all... posted.
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Stumble It!
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