Portfolio A1 Appears to Find a Bottom

After four weeks of performance that you wouldn’t want to be downwind of, it seems appropriate that it took a new addition to the portfolio – and a fertilizer company at that – to turn around Portfolio A1. The fertilizer company, Mosaic (MOS), surged 14% last week, while the other portfolio newcomer, agricultural equipment maker CNH Global (CNH) posted a weekly return of 5.7%. For now at least, the agricultural theme is working.

The aggregate portfolio statistics are still on the ugly side, with the portfolio down 12% since the February 16^th inception, well behind the benchmark S&P 500’s 1.6% gain during the same period. With a Sharpe ratio of -0.72, a winning percentage of 36%, and a maximum drawdown of 29.9%, one has to look long and hard to find a silver lining in the portfolio’s performance. Still, I will ride this portfolio out through the end of the year, at which time I will introduce a new portfolio with a strong discretionary component, as I outlined last week.

This week Portfolio A1 swaps BRIC telecoms by saying goodbye to Moscow-based Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (MBT) and replacing it with Brasil Telecom Participacoes (BRP), an ADR that the discretionary trader in me likes a great deal. There are no other changes to the portfolio this week.

A snapshot of the portfolio is as follows: