TRS Reports Manager Spotlight
A November Winner
Charles vK. Carlson is currently the 56th ranked manager in our TRSreports.com Quarterly Fund Manager Rankings. He also holds the distinction of being one of the few managers to post a positive return for the month of November.
Carlson, who holds the CFA designation, currently manages the Greenspring Fund (GRSPX), a hybrid asset allocation fund that holds stocks, bonds and cash. He is the Director and President of the fund and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Corbyn Investment Management, the investment adviser to the fund. Carlson, a John Hopkins graduate, joined Corbyn in 1983 as an analyst and has been managing the fund since 1987.
Carlson has a decided value tilt, looking for strong gains in up markets and capital preservation in down ones. He invests in out of favor small- and mid-cap companies that are trading at a discount to their historical prices and their peers. He employs a bottom up approach of individual security analysis by looking for companies with significant free cash flow.
Carlson and his team focus on what they call the "inefficient sector", an area of the market not followed by most of Wall Street. They also look for a catalyst such as new products or economic changes that could affect the company or its industry. In addition to cash, the fund holds special situation bonds which can include high yield convertible and corporate bonds. In his fixed income research, Carlson looks for attractive interest rates and typically holds securities for a short time frame.
The fund's top industries are insurance and construction; hardly where the herd is grazing. By looking at the fund's top holdings, only 4 are equities. This isn't surprising in the current market environment. Carlson likes Michael Baker Corp (BKR), an engineering and energy services company, FTI Consulting Inc (FCN) which provides legal and financial consulting and insurance companies Assurant Inc (AIZ) and United America Indemnity (INDM). The rest of the top ten include convertible bonds for Sepracor, Level 2 Communications, Digital River, Xerox Corp, and Agere Systems and a corporate bond for Mentor Corp.
The fund is a "TRS Hidden Gem" with only $277 million in assets (as of 11/30/08).
David Cohne, Manager Director of Research at TRSreports.com TRSreports.com is the only quantitative research service that tracks and ranks the performance track records of individual open- and closed-end portfolio managers.
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