Strategy Central

[John French]

Steve, I was a big fan of the AP6 in Australia, I had two. The second one was fairly standard but the first one was something I bought off a guy who was figuring to hot-rod it but lost interest (or ran out of money). It had a 225 cubic inch (3.7 litre) Slant Six and a three speed column shift with extractors. For the first six months it was in dire need of a paint job so it looked like something out of Mad Max but it sure did shift.

At the time I was in Adelaide when they still had the Aussie Grand Prix and for two weeks or so pre-race my route to work took in the main straight down Dequiteville Terrace. Needless to say in what is the rev-head capital of Australia (despite what you may hear to the contrary) the morning commute often turned into something more akin to drag-racing.

The AP5 was a real beauty with (believe it or not) push button gears on the dash.

BTW I changed my DD limits from -5%, -10% and -15% to -3%, -6% and -9% and the data set to date returns for the ETF model went up by some 20% overall but for the Fidelity Model (which I am really regarding as my out of sample test) the data set to date (1989) $'s went up by more than 60%. Life to date realized on the Fidelity model is around 25%, there is a DD of 19% in 2001/2002 but other than that 11% in 1997 and nothing else above 5%.

With the ETF model the annual %age is close to 30% with an 11% DD in 2004, 9% in 2002 and then nothing >3% for 2000 through today.

John