Legendary Value Investor Sees Opportunities in Volatile Market
Monday September 8, 9:17 am ET
By the tickerspy.com Staff
Despite what is set to be a huge open today, this has been a challenging market the last few months. Some of the world's most highly regarded value investors have been seeing opportunity, though. Among them is the legendary Marty Whitman, whose Third Avenue Value Management has taken stock of the landscape and decided the time is ripe to raise $3 billion for a private-equity fund to focus on investing in distressed companies. According to The Wall Street Journal, a number of other firms are launching similar funds, including Cerberus Capital Management, Carlyle Group, and BlackRock (NYSE: BLK - News).
Meanwhile, Third Avenue earlier this year reopened its Third Avenue Small-Cap Value Fund (Nasdaq: TASCX - News). Since inception, the fund has returned an annualized 10.75% through the end of July.
New York-based Third Avenue is a long-term, value-focused manager of mutual funds and hedge funds. Its largest mutual fund is the Third Avenue Value Fund (Nasdaq: TAVFX - News). This year, Whitman has taken a contrarian line, continuing to add to stakes in embattled bond insurers MBIA (NYSE: MBI - News) and Ambac Financial (NYSE: ABK - News). Given that Third Avenue's launching of the new distressed fund is a clear signal that it is seeing value in the market, investors will be curious to see where the firm was putting its money during Q2.
Looking at Third Avenue's top-15, U.S.-listed, equity holdings, which are aggregated across all its funds, one can see that its largest stakes are in Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE: BAM - News) and real estate outfit Forest City Enterprises (NYSE: FCE-A - News). Third Avenue was trimming shares in Brookfield and adding to its Forest City stakes during Q2.
Other top holdings included stakes in Korean steelmaker Posco (NYSE: PKX - News), drilling contractor Nabors Industries (NYSE: NBR - News), real estate development company The St. Joe Company (NYSE: JOE - News), The Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE: BK - News), and independent oil and gas exploration and production company Cimarex Energy (NYSE: XEC - News).
