Sunday, November 20, 2011

Will Nasgovitz of Heartland Funds Visits the AIM Program

On Monday, November 21, Will Nasgovitz of Heartland Funds will visit the students in the AIM Class of 2012. Will joined Heartland as a research associate in 2003 and was promoted to Portfolio Manager in 2006, becoming the fourth member of the Select Value Fund investment team. In 2009, Will joined the Value Fund's investment team. Prior to Heartland, Will was a Senior Research Associate with Cambridge Associates, LLC in Washington D.C.

As a portfolio manager, Will has appeared in numerous interviews on Bloomberg TV, Marketwatch, TheStreet.com and CNBC, discussing individual stocks, sectors and Heartland’s value investing approach. Will graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a BBA in Finance. He currently sits on the board of the Urban Ecology Center, an environmental education and nonprofit community center located along the Milwaukee River. Will is a genuine Milwaukee Eastsider who enjoys biking and golfing and admits to being a novice fly fisherman.


Dr. David Krause, AIM program director said, “Heartland Funds have been supportive of the AIM program the past several years. They have provided valuable internships for our students and we’ve had two AIM ‘road shows’ in the past. We’re looking forward to Will Nasgovitz’s visit to the AIM program and we’re hopeful that our students will be presenting at a ‘road show’ at Heartland in the spring.”

The various fund managers at Heartland provide written and video market notes and commentary. Below you will find the most recent version of “Nasgovitz Notes” for November 2011.



VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:  TIME FOR SMALL-CAP STOCKS TO OUTPERFORM?

Hi, I’m Will Nasgovitz, Portfolio Manager here at Heartland Advisors. Thanks for tuning in to the November, 2011 edition of the Nasgovitz Notes. Before we jump into our topic, I want to thank everyone for submitting ideas for us to discuss in these videos. We got a lot of great ideas, so thank you very much, but we are looking for more, so feel free to submit topics for us by emailing us at shareholderservices@heartlandfunds.com.

With that, I want to jump into our topic. One of our shareholders asked for some additional perspective on the equity markets in the third quarter of 2011. It was a very difficult one for equity investors, particularly for small cap stocks in the third quarter. The Russell 2000 was down 21.9% versus a loss of 13.9% for the S&P 500. Importantly though, our investor was curious how this performance of small cap stocks compared to other down quarters and how small cap stocks have gone on to historically perform in the subsequent quarter and one year out time period.

Interestingly, the third quarter of 2011 for small cap stocks was the fourth worst on record for the Russell 2000. And as you can see in this particular chart, small cap stocks have gone on to post positive returns, on average, in the subsequent quarter and the one year out time period. 




1/1/1940 - 9/30/2011  Source: Credit Suisse Small & Mid Cap US Equity Strategy, Bloomberg. *Forward Year Returns represent the annualized return on year after the respective worst quarter above.
 
Clearly though, there are periods where small cap stocks do continue to decline, but these instances are less frequent than when the small cap stocks have gone on to post positive returns in the subsequent periods.

Why is this important to you as a Heartland shareholder or prospective customer? Well, all of our Funds at Heartland have exposure to small cap stocks, and, historically, small cap stocks have gone on to outperform large cap stocks following a bear market. And we believe this could occur again as we close out 2011 and enter 2012. So, thanks for watching and Happy Thanksgiving.”