market folly

Below is the semi-annual report from Marty Whitman's Third Avenue Funds. In it, you'll find portfolio manager commentary from their Value Fund, Small-Cap Value Fund, Real Estate Value Fund, International Value Fund, and Focused Credit Fund. We typically like to highlight intriguing market commentary from fund managers and you can view all our posts via our posts on hedge fund investor letters.

Turning to Third Avenue's latest missive, we get commentary on numerous topics. Most notably though, is the Chairman's letter from Marty Whitman. While his commentary these days is obviously less frequent than it once was, it's still always interesting to get his take on things. Last time around, he was out defending the managed mutual fund space. This time around, his letter focuses on 'eight areas of financial misunderstanding' including the "too big to fail" concept. While he readily admits that he is prejudiced since he is from the mutual fund industry, he attributes that a lot of success in his industry stems from strict regulation. As such, he argues that strict regulation of financial institutions is absolutely imperative.

Below is the latest commentary from Whitman as well as the portfolio managers of the various Third Avenue funds:



You can download a .pdf here.

If you want to learn more about Whitman and his value investing philosophies, we point you of course to his book, The Aggressive Conservative Investor. Interestingly enough, this book has landed on legendary investor Seth Klarman's recommended reading list as well. That testimonial obviously speaks for itself.