Mutual Fund Monthly

October was an ugly month, not way to spin it. The S&P 500 experienced its biggest monthly decline in 21 years (since 1987). And many, many mutual funds are down well in excess of the market this year.

For October, I have 3 funds that bucked the weakness and were up for the month:

• Rydex Managed Futures (+10.2%)
• Nakoma Absolute Return (+3.7%)
• Caldwell & Orkin Mkt Opportunity (+2.86%)

But only the Rydex fund is higher for the full year to date (+10.5%)

Among the worst performing funds on my list are:

• Ivy Global Nat. Resources (-33.7%)
• Winslow Green Growth (-32.4%)
• CGM Focus (-29.8%)

The one that surprises me here is CGMFX. Ken Heebner has an excellent track record, and is a very good manager. But with a mandate that allows him to short, I have to wonder why he didn't have more shorts on to offset some of his long exposure?

Among the sector ETFs that I follow, none were higher in October. The SPDR Regional Bank ETF (KRE) was down the least, at -7.3%. And the Market Vectors Gold ETF (GDX) was down the most, -38.0%.

Ditto for the International ETFs. There were all down materially in October, with Japan (EWJ) down the least (-15.6%), and Russia (RSX) down the most (-34.6%). Ugly.

These declines took the market down to deeply oversold levels. While volatility could remain higher than normal, I do expect the market to fare better in the last 2 months of the year.

long CGMFX, RYMFX