Small-Cap Value, Big Expectations?

Curtis Jenson runs the Third Avenue Small-Cap Value Fund--following the same "safe and cheap" formula that has worked well for his mentor, Marty Whitman, over the years. As we always find Jenson's comments in the Third Avenue reports insightful, we do searches for him every once in a while to see if he's in the news saying anything, um, new. He's not. But it turns out someone else is answering the question for readers of what expectations to have for his fund. Worth a quick browse at the very least.

Closed Funds Opening?

In an article at CNNMoney, Yuval Rosenberg points out a silver lining in the dark clouds over the stock market: many previously closed funds are now opening to new investors. Third Avenue's Small Cap Value gets a nice mention, excerpted below:

Manager Curtis Jensen has been at the helm since the fund's inception in 1997. The fund lost nearly 35% last year, but it bested the S&P 500 (SPX) by 2.4 percentage points. Over the last decade, it has topped the Russell 2000 (RUT) index by 3 percentage points a year and beaten the S&P 500 by better than seven percentage points a year.

Like Samra and O'Keefe, Jensen looks for well-financed companies trading at deep discounts of 30% or more to their intrinsic values. He's willing to buy bargains wherever he finds them, whether it be Japanese firms like brewer and beer hall operator Sapporo Holdings, his top holding, and shopping mall operator PARCO, No. 2, or Denver-based oil and natural gas producer St. Mary Land & Exploration Co. (SM), No. 3.

At the link above, more information on this fund and others. If you're interested in some of the holdings mentioned above, we highly recommend you read the investor letters. Third Avenue as a whole provides great information on why they like what they like--and Jenson is no exception.