The Market Sits Like A Heavy Necklace

Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is a comparative thing. Booth Tarkington in his classic novel “ The Magnificent Ambersons” posed the idea that to make a fortune while others are losing fortunes is the ultimate success story, bar none. 

In reviewing quarterly investment reports from filed 401k’s I keep in mind the name of the game is making money while doing better than everyone else ranging up to trillion dollar money pools that rarely excel, but like “Ole Man River” keep rolling along. 

First my own 401k report. For better or worse, I’m in a capital conservation construct. I can’t remember ever being less invested in stocks. I own a handful like Boeing, American Express, Goldman Sachs, Amazon and Eli Lilly. My invested position is around 30% and the remainder rests in 10-year and 30-year Treasuries. For all my invested life, I’ve always tapped leverage. It’s what you do when you start with maybe $10,000 but anxious to get rich. 

I’ve cursed out Fed Reserve chairman for raising rates.  I resorted to money brokers who carried me on 10% margin but marked-to market, overnight. Those heady days may be gone forever, but tapping maximum leverage made me rich. In bear markets I eliminated debt that was costing me a 9% rate of interest., If you wanna be rich you do what you have to do to tap play money in hand. 

I was surprised to see the poor performance of the sizable T. Rowe Price Associates fund. This is a $927 billion fund that lost over $10 billion in the final quarter of 2025. Its static ratio ran low at 8.3% with huge sales in major holdings like Nvidia and Amazon as well as Microsoft, Alphabet and Eli Lilly, big winners offset by Meta’s shrinkage. Eli Lilly is just a 1.7% position but helped performance. Top 10 positions, 35% of the portfolio, is in highly visible growthies. As an investor, I’d buy an index fund heavy in growth stocks before I’d get serious on T. Rowe Price. 

Renaissance Technologies, its equity market valuation in decline is too broadly diversified with typical positions hardly exceeding 1% of assets. This is a super high turnover operation. Its static ratio basically zero. Sizable equity market turnover persists. Some 23% of the portfolio was eliminated. Most positions sit under 1% of assets. Biggest position is Palantir at 2.4% of the asset base. Tesla and Palantir hold at 1% positions, some 23% of the portfolio was sold out. I’d buy an index fund before putting capital here. 

The Soros Fund is a refreshing change.  This is a $7.3 billion fund with a high turnover ratio but very visible, analyzable positions. Amazon heads its list at 7.4% of assets and then the fund shows a diversified list of growth stocks. You could probably do as well in a broad based growth stock index. Alphabet and Salesforce comprised just 4.5% of its asset base. 

Lee Cooperman’s Omega Advisors at $3 billion in assets is a portfolio of nearly all special positions in medium-sized companies. The only asset I recognized is Energy Transfer, an energy MLP. I like it  for its sizable dividend payout. I own Enterprise Products Partners which yielded over 6% when I bought it years ago. 

Tiger Global Management, a $29 billion house, was an active trader in its quarter. Static ratio 46% but there was shrinkage in asset value of nearly 19%. All the familiar positions with Alphabet at 11% of assets. Top 5 positions, familiar growthies like Microsoft and Amazon, over 16% of assets. Nothing here changes my opinion that investors could be better off in a fund tied to the S&P 500 or even the NASDAQ 100. 

It’s hard not to conclude that many funds are run like Tiger’s asset base which trades up a storm to no avail. Pershing Square Capital I’ve liked for its long standing positioning in stocks like Chipotle. It finally had a bad quarter and they banged it out after an $844 million quarterly decline. That said, Pershing was positive for the quarter. Amazon and Alphabet showed moxie. Actually, Alphabet lost ‘em more capital than the Chipotle disappointment. 

This is one of the few funds I respect for thoughtful money management, but nobody gets my money except yours truly.