Guru Focused: Robert Olstein?s Short Sells - Answering Service Resources

Home
>
Investing
>
Guru Focused: Robert Olstein?s Short Sells

Guru Focused: Robert Olstein?s Short Sells

While it is rather rare that value gurus sell stocks short, Robert Olstein has been selling short in his Financial Alert Fund. The accountant-turned fund manager spots values by looking behind the numbers. In the second quarter of 2004, Robert Olstein sold short American Italian Pasta Co. (PLB) at $31. After about 6 months he covered at $20, easily made more than $1 million for his fund. Currently he is shorting two stocks: Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) and Fleetwood Enterprises Inc (FLE), although things do not always go that smoothly.

Robert Olstein is certainly one of the best money managers (that is why he is in GuruFocus's Hall of Fame). The strategy of looking behind the numbers has brought his fund a 15.5% average annual return over 10 years after all fees. Its only down year was 2002, off 19%. In 2000, the year the tech bubble burst, the fund was up 12%, and in 2001, up 17%.

Robert Olstein started shorting Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) in the first quarter of 2004 at an average price of $41. He said that the accounting of CSC is not in accord with its economic reality, CSC is worth about $30. The price of CSC did not go down, however. He then shorted more shares. But the price of CSC went up, by the fourth quarter of 2004, the price of CSC was $56. It came down some in the first quarter of 2005, Robert Olstein was confident enough to short more shares again. As of the end of the first quarter, his shorting position in CSC totaled 504,500 shares with an average price of $42. As of this writing, the price of CSC is $46.4.

The other short selling of Robert Olstein is Fleetwood Enterprises Inc (FLE). He thinks that Fleetwood Enterprises Inc is worth about $5-6 per share. He sold short 1,195,500 shares of FLE at about $9.2 per share in the first quarter of 2005. Right now Fleetwood has a price of $9.5 per share.

Interestingly, another highly respected value manager, GuruFocus guru, Robert Rodriguez, does not agree with his value peer Olstein. In the fourth quarter of 2004, Rodriguez added 269,500 shares of FLE to his holdings at around $14 per share. As the share price dropped to $9, he added 2,261,900 more shares, which makes his total holding of Fleetwood to 3,714,400 shares.

Who is right, Robert vs. Robert?

Dr. Charlie Tian is the Director of Research of GuruFocus.com, a website tracks the stock picks and market insight of guru investors such as Warren Buffett, George Soros etc.

In The News:

Fidelity hires new head of personal investing
Boston Globe, United States - 11 hours ago
Fidelity Investments has hired ING Groep NV's Kathleen Murphy as president of its personal investing unit. Murphy, 45, will start at Fidelity on Jan. ...
Highest-Level Executive In State To Leave ING Hartford Courant
ING to split annuities and retirement units InvestmentNews
all 4 news articles

UPDATE 1-Baosteel to speed overseas investment, eyes Spain
Reuters - 7 hours ago
By Alison Leung HONG KONG, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Baosteel Group, China's largest steelmaker, plans to speed up overseas investment to take advantage of lower ...
Baosteel May Delay $4 Billion Vale Slab Venture By Nine Months Bloomberg
all 6 news articles

Global Investing Roundups
Money Morning - 7 hours ago
AT&T Inc. (T) said it would scale back 12000 jobs, about 4% of its workforce, between now and the end of 2009 to fight "economic pressures, ...

Telegraph.co.uk
CIC Head Wary of Investing in Western Banks
Wall Street Journal - Dec 2, 2008
Lou Jiwei, who head's China Investment Corp., said the uncertainty surrounding Western banks and the policy decisions that may determine their fate makes it ...
CIC weary of Western banks Thomson Merger News (registration)
China's sovereign wealth fund to avoid western financial firms: report AFP
CIC Now Very Wary of Investment in Foreign Financial Firms ChinaStakes.com
Reuters - In-Forumall 274 news articles

slow and steady investing
CNNMoney.com - 15 hours ago
Investor Daily: During the flat market of 1966-1982, investors who kept investing every month earned better returns. By Adam Lashinsky, senior writer SAN ...

GoldMorgan Stanley, Investing For Deflation, And ETFs Gain By Default
IndexUniverse.com, NY - 1 hour ago
... bonds slip further into negative territory, this article summarising some recent Merrill Lynch research, on investing for deflation, caught my eye. ...

Investing in Pure-Play Companies
Motley Fool - 12 minutes ago
By Selena Maranjian I've written before about the advantages of concentrated or "focused" investing. Focusing your investing attention and dollars just ...

Ball State Investing $17.7M In Emerging Media Reseach Initiative
Broadcast Newsroom, CA - 16 hours ago
By John Eggerton Ball State is in investing $17.7 million in a new Emerging Media reseach initiative. The goal of the initiative, funded with money from the ...

Is Real Estate Investing Our Best Shot at Wealth?
Seeking Alpha, NY - Dec 4, 2008
91 percent of homeowners surveyed by real-estate-services firm Realogy Corp. thought that owning a home was the best long-term investment they could make, ...

Forget the Investing Gene
Motley Fool - 17 minutes ago
Just as some parents will inevitably use this test as the sole reason to keep their kids from certain sports, we sometimes keep ourselves from investing for ...

investing - Google News

Answering Service ResourceAnswering Service Resource