Monday, June 9, 2008

Heebner

I have owned Ken Heebner's Focus fund for about a week now. Time enough to see some results, I'm thinking.

This is not as easy as it may seem. The fund doesn't release its closing price every evening until the next morning. So, when I bought my first batch, I didn't find out till the next day that I'd paid up from the previous close though, by that time, it was already down again, which I didn't find out until the next day. Heebner is a wily cuss, I'm thinking.

Anyway, I figured, if it went down, I would buy another batch. By Wednesday, it was down a buck-fifty from where I bought it. That wasn't much of a decline, but I was itching to buy another piece. So I placed an order mid-afternoon Wednesday, thinking I'd get the closing price of $56.30.

The next day, everything went nuts to the upside. CGMFX, as it is known in the trade, achieved a price of $58.94, which was better than $56.30 by $2.34. I rejoiced. Hallelujah Land seemed right around the corner.

Then I found out that the cutoff period for buying the fund, each day, is 11:45 AM. In the morning. I'd placed my order in the afternoon. So, the price I got was $58.94 which was worse than $56.30 by $2.34. And I was thinking that Ken Heebner, when he was a kid, probably hiked his britches up too high. I thought about it some more, and and then I got over it.

It was, I told myself, the spirit of performance yet to come. The future was bright. Friday, everything went nuts to the downside. All my Vanguard funds were down 2 1/2 to 3 %.

I had to wait until Saturday to get the news on CGMFX. I braced myself. I figured it would be worse than Vanguard. I looked it up in Barron's and didn't believe what I saw - it was down 31 cents. After being up $2.34, it was down 31 cents. Half of one-percent. I checked it several times on the Internet to be sure it was right. It was right.

And I'm thinking Ken Heebner can wear his britches any way he wants to.

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