Top Gun Records An Excellent 3rd Quarter Despite Little Long Equity Exposure

Top Gun recorded an excellent 3rd quarter despite very little exposure to stocks – including none (excluding gold equities) for the ferocious, Fed inspired bounce from Thursday August 16 through the end of the quarter.

Here’s how the 3rd quarter looked (Chart):

S&P 500: +1.56%

Wilshire 5000: +1.31%

Top Gun: +6.60%

And YTD (Year To Date):

S&P 500: +7.65%

Wilshire 5000: +8.06%

Top Gun: +11.01%

Top Gun was able to turn in this performance by profiting from large short positions in financials, homebuilders, REITS and consumer discretionary companies during the first 5 weeks of the quarter in which they were hammered. 

We also profited from large gold and gold equity positions as gold rallied powerfully in the last part of the quarter.

What cost us even bigger gains was selling our remaining (non-gold) equity positions (about 40% of the overall portfolio) into the panic in mid August.

Despite that latter decision not turning out well, I am pleased that Top Gun was able to record such a good quarter while maintaining a defensive and skeptical position toward the outlooks for the global economy and stock markets.

UPDATE (Thu 10/4, 9:00pm PST): I forgot to include our interest for September in the above calculation.  Including it nudged up our quarterly and year to date numbers slightly.