It is always fascinating to me that during market peaks, the level of cash in most mutual funds, even value funds, drops to near zero. I am always surprised these managers seem to be willing to buy at any price. In the past LLPFX always seems to be the poster child for "If we can't find anything worth buying we won"t) but they have clearly seen better days and are struggling.
Given the rapid run up in Value funds, I am reluctant to add more capital to funds that seem to have thrown caution to the wind.
A search of M* for cash levels over 10% in funds of four stars or more, turns up only a few candidates Yacktman funds YACKX, Brandes small cap BACSX, our friends QRSVX, Neuberger Berman NPNAX, Olstein OFSAX ( I thought he retired!) and a firm I have never heard of, Clarkston CILGX. ( I tried a similar search on MFO but it turned up nothing. Not sure the "Cash Allocation" criteria is the same)
Clarkston seems like an interesting group; the kind of funds many members are interested in. Small out of the way, owned by the employees, managers heavily invested (over $1,000,000) in their cooking, available at Schwab and Fido.. A great Owl, also. There fund reports have a fair amount of detail about their processes.
Anybody know any more about them?
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