The linked report included the fund's top ten positioning as of September 30 both in terms of percentage weightings but also value at risk weightings.
NAV top ten;
Australian Ten Year Bond Futures
Source Physical Gold ETC
ETFS Physical Gold ETF
MSCI Asia ex-Japan Staples ETF
VIX Futures
Long USD/Short Korean won
DB Physical Silver ETC
Long USD/Short Chinese yuan
ETFS Global Agribusiness ETF
Australian Three Year Bond Futures
VaR top ten
Source Physical Gold ETC
ETFS Physical Gold ETF
VIX Futures
ETFS Global Agribusiness ETF
Source Physical Silver ETC
Philip Morris (client holding)
Starbucks
AB Foods
Chevron
Exxon Mobil
If you are familiar with Hendry then you know he embeds many themes into his portfolio and as you can tell he is able create most of the themes in the portfolio with exchange traded products; futures, individual stocks and ETFs. And for anyone so inclined currency pairs and crosses are now easily accessed in retail sized accounts at forex firms.
The point is not abut copying Hendry or anyone else but to realize that just about any theme or concept you can devise can be implemented on a retail sized scale which is--repeat theme coming--very democratizing.
That is not to say that everyone should open a forex account to game the Hungarian forint against the euro but a large determinant of how people construct their portfolios is time available to spend on the task and interest in the task. Eight years of maintaining this site and it is obvious from the comments that there are plenty of do it yourselfers with the time and inclination to construct similarly sophisticated portfolio's as Hendry's. I doubt this applies to the majority of do it yourselfers but there is plenty of room between owning one equity fund and one bond fund and a portfolio like Hendry's.
There is one ETF in the list that I don't think has a precise US equivalent; the MSCI Asia ex-Japan Staples ETF. I think this fund is from Lyxor and trades in London under symbol COGS. EG Shares has its Emerging Markets Consumer Services ETF (VGEM) but that only has about 20% in Asia. If anyone knows whether foreign traded ETFs like COGS can be traded through these relatively new direct trading services offered by Schwab, Fidelity and a couple of others, please leave a comment.
5 comments:
"Hugh Hendry 2012 Letter and Views
Ultimately, he thinks we'll see one more washout in the market, with 30-year Treasury yields hitting 2.5% (they're currently at 3.125%) and the VIX surging to 80, at which point we'll have a truly 'generational' opportunity to buy risk assets. It is really interesting view because he is not overly bullish on bonds compared to VIX. I wonder how much stocks must go down so the VIX go to 80. Probably his view on the bonds expresses that even though bonds are safe heaven they are at their last stage of a bubble."
I know the Schwab Global acct allows broad access in local currencies to a dozen major int'l markets including London and wouldn't be surprised if offerings elsewhere weren't comparable. I haven't played with it but see no reason why COGS or any other ETP would be a problem provided it was traded in one of the covered exchanges.
RW,
For reasons that were unclear to me it used to be that US residents (not sure about US citizens living abroad) could not buy funds listed in other countries in the context of you or me buying COGS. That has either changed or it hasn't, I don't know.
Roger, okay, I think I see the distinction you are addressing: Access to an exchange is one thing but policy or prospectus requirements governing particular instruments, funds in this case, may be another; i.e., even full access to an exchange would not make them purchasable to a domestic US investor.
I don't know the answer to that but I suspect there is more latitude in that regard than there has been in the past or demand for accounts such as Schwab Global (and promotion of such accounts) would not be quite so visible.
yeah RW it is pretty binary, I just don't know the answer
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