Dear friends,
In an interesting development, Eric Cinnamond (ex of Intrepid Endurance ICMAX and Aston/RiverRoad Independent Value ARIVX) and Jayme Wiggins (ex of Intrepid Endurance ICMAX) are joining forces to launch the Palm Valley Capital Fund. A small cap absolute value fund. 1.2
5% expenses (undercutting ICMAX on price), $2,
500 minimum. ICMAX has a cluttered manager history with both guys on the fund from 200
5-08, then Wiggins leaving in 08, Cinnamond leaving in '10, Wiggins returning in '10 and leaving in '18. Mark Travis, the firm's founder, helped manage the fund from 200
5-17, left, then returned for about four months after Mr. Wiggins' sort of sudden departure. ICMAX is now managed by three guys who I don't particularly know.
Messrs Cinnamond and Wiggins are both excellent stock pickers, a fact mostly masked by their absolute value orientation. At base, absolute value investors believe that stocks are
sometimes insanely profitable but are
always insanely risky. The only rational time to buy is when you can buy them at a
50% discount to what they're worth. In most markets, there are dozens of stocks, especially the stocks of tiny firms, that are massively undervalued. In part of every market cycle, though, such bargains disappear as momentum investors and froth fiends pile in. When that happens, absolute value guys run out of stuff to buy and begin building cash. Later still, their holdings become uncomfortably expensive (that is, risky) and get sold one by one; if there's nothing to replace them, cash builds further. Somewhere in there investors with short memories are seized by FOMO and flee from the absolute value funds to the funds that have made the most profit during the market's frothy phase. Somewhere thereafter, the market collapses, the folks in the riskiest funds get burned the most badly and the absolute value investors make a mint for their remaining investors. Shortly thereafter, panicked people fleeing the high growth funds rush in the door, assets soar and the cycle begins anew.
Market cycles usually run around seven years, but the intervention that probably saved the economy in 2008 kept market valuations from plumbing their normal bear market lows and a decade of effectively zero interest rates have prolonged the current one. As a result, absolute value guys were holding historic levels of cash for historic periods; in consequence, they became historically unpopular. In 2016, Mr. Cinnamond decided to liquidate ARIVX which was sitting at about 90% cash; his argument was that he didn't see an immediate prospect for a return to normal valuations and he wasn't willing to indefinitely charge his investors equity fund fees for something close to a money market. In 2018, for reasons not made public, Mr. Wiggins left ICMAX which was sitting at about 8
5% cash.
The launch of Palm Valley, likely at the end of April, raises interesting questions (what led the managers to decide that this was the time to beginning raising capital which will only be useful after a really substantial correction?) and will offer a really interesting opportunity for small cap investors who are intensely aware of the need to manage the enormous extremes of such stocks.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1650149/000089418919000884/spt-palm_485a.htmDavid
