Performance in 2nd Quarter 2012

Ignoring currency changes but accounting for trading expenses, the fund returned -3.09% in the 3 months to 30 June 2012. Over this same time period, the S&P500 returned -4.01%.

So the fund moderately outperformed the index.

For the half year ended 30 June 2012, the fund returned 5.52% Over this same time period, the S&P500 returned 6.66%, so the fund is still underperforming the index by a moderate amount.

The current internal rate of return of the fund (the best measure, but the hardest to compare to the S&P500) as of today (July 14) is 7.52%.

The best performers in the portfolio for the quarter were:

• Origin Financial (ORGN) (+35.51% including dividend) 
• Tree.com (TREE) (+16.10%), 
• Asta Funding (ASFI) (+15.45%), 

The worst performers for the quarter were:

• LCA-Vision (LCAV) (-42.95%), 
• Aperam (APEMY) (-40.49%) 
• Dell Computers (DELL) (-29.15%)

Performance in 1st Quarter 2012

Ignoring currency changes but accounting for trading expenses, the fund returned 10.83% in the 3 months to 31 March 2012.  Over this same time period, the S&P500 returned 12.55%. 

It’s not surprising that in a bull market (9^th best 1^st Quarter in S&P500 history) the fund underperformed, but it does mean that simply buying an index fund and forgetting about it outperformed all the carefully selected stocks in the portfolio.

The best performers in the portfolio were:

• Aperam (APEMY) (+29.56%),
• Teekay Corporation (TK) (+24.87%),
• NAPCO Security Technologies (NSSC) (+22.05%),
• Microsoft (MSFT) (+21.29%),
• Dolby Laboratories (DLB) (+21.04%).

The worst performers were:

• Multiband Corporation (MBND) (-8.48%),
• Clearwater Paper (CLW) (-2.96%),
• Gyrodyne (GYRO) (-1.90%)