Note: Please read this old post before the below for background info.
As I have detailed in the past, I think it is paramount for your money manager or advisor to have ‘skin in the game’. I am happy to be 100% transparent with my holdings, and have detailed my approach to investing my own assets in the past a number of times. You should ask your money manager what they do with their own money – it may surprise you! I place all of my assets in Cambria funds.
Not much is different for me going into 2015 as there exist the same themes from the old interview:
“As you can see, my holdings are dominated by foreign stocks, portfolios that can and do have the ability to tactically move to cash (and have a high exposure to real assets), and stocks that are shareholder-friendly and returning lots of cash to investors. I am least exposed to traditional bonds, but for me they are not that attractive at these levels for my time horizon and goals. If stocks experienced a large drawdown of 30% to 90%, I would shift more and more of the allocation to the equity portion. As I’ve mentioned in our new book, I don’t think U.S. stocks are that attractive currently, but I am very positive on foreign stocks.”
As a trendfollower, I like the idea of having half of my portfolio being able to move to cash or hedges if markets trend down. As a value investor, I also want exposure to assets that may be cheap over long horizons. Main changes have been rolling the old private fund assets into GMOM, allocating to new funds (new private fund strategy, new launches GMOM and GAA), and rebalancing to buy more beaten down holdings (GVAL). I still have a few more allocations to make in January but by month end the allocation should be roughly:
Broad Groupings
Tactical or Market Neutral Strategies 44%
Long Only Strategies 56%
Within those categories:
GVAL 25%
GMOM 23%
Private Fund 21% (Cambria Special Situations – a leveraged, tactical fund investing in US stocks, is 200% gross long and can be 0 to 100% net long)
GAA 18%
FYLD 12%
SYLD 1%
I will update again in 2016!
