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  • BusinessWeek article on redemptions:

    http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LTXX2V0D9L3501-2919CVFKG2KPA6JHG5LFAOE663

    "Fairholme held no Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley shares as of Aug. 31, according to a Form N-Q filed Oct. 28 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Miami-based mutual fund held 6.26 million Goldman Sachs shares and 34.8 million Morgan Stanley shares with a combined market value of $1.72 billion as of May 31, equaling almost 11 percent of net assets.

    Berkowitz, whose fund fell 21 percent this year through last week, raised his Bank of America stake to 81.9 million shares as of Aug. 31 from 77.3 million as of May 31. He pared his Citigroup stake almost 2 percent to 20.8 million shares. The stocks have fallen about 48 percent and 33 percent in 2011, respectively.
    ...
    During the quarter ended Aug. 31, the fund's net assets shrank to $10.9 billion from $15.9 billion. Investors pulled a net $4.7 billion from Fairholme's flagship fund through the end of September, forcing Berkowitz to raise cash by selling stocks he would otherwise have hung onto, said Kevin McDevitt, a Morningstar analyst."

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  • With the poor performance this year, they should be able to harvest losses to cancel out the gains. Morningstar has their potential cap gains exposure as -13% so it's unlikely we'll see capital gains distributions this year.
  • Reply to @mns: While things have certainly changed over time, this is an article that talks about where some of the buying was done - BoA was started to be bought at $15, JOE at $26 average (at least at the point of the article.)

    http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/05/09/berkowitz-on-aig-i-was-wrong/

    Sears has been averaged into between $50-164.

    http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2010/11/01/how-good-is-bruce-berkowitz/
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  • Reply to @Maurice: The Morningstar data is just information, it doesn't actually say what will happen. But given that there have been significant redemptions, Fairholme had to sell something. So I would fully expect that they'd be picking the highest cost lots to sell from to offset the gains; it's really basic tax management. Berkowitz moved to Florida in part to avoid state income taxes so it's a good bet that he'd keep a close eye on the cap gains.
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