WANT a real roller-coaster ride? Then try the listed fund managers.
When the sharemarket was on the skids investors with fund-management shares witnessed horrific falls.
Declines of around 90 per cent were common, and Hunter Hall International didn't escape that sort of punishment, falling by 86 per cent.
Hunter Hall is a manager outside the mainstream. Presided over by Peter Hall, an unabashed tree-hugger, it looks for undervalued stocks frequently off the beaten track.
A flavour of its orientation is shown by documentation to shareholders that comes complete with pictures of Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Its funds include the Global Ethical Trust.
Hunter Hall went public nine years ago when it was talking about managing $192 million of other people's money. Its shares were offered at 90¢ apiece.
Two years ago its funds under management had soared to $2.7 billion and management and performance fees came flooding in.
The scrip soared to $18-plus as the great boom in the money management game played out.
But the party ended and Hunter Hall scrip came back to earth with a mighty thud, falling as low as $2.61. Funds under management at June 30 had fallen to $1.7 billion and that meant lower management fees, and performance fees that were a fraction of those collected in 2007.
Now that the market has recovered strongly, Hunter Hall scrip has enjoyed gains greater than market. The shares are now at $6.76.
Its funds under management have improved to about $2 billion, and the fall in management fees has likely been halted.
While the group has various feel-good funds, the big daddy of them all is its value growth trust, which accounts for about 60 per cent of its money.
The trust's record is not too bad at all, returning 16 per cent compound over 15 years and that's due to its stock-picking prowess, which often includes shares not favoured by the crowd.
Hunter Hall does best when its funds under management are soaring and its stock picks are making mincemeat of the benchmark index.
The shares have run hard, but there's still the matter of the total performance fee, which at June 30 stood at minus $50 million.
By November 24 that had improved to a negative $39.5 million, but only time will tell when performance fees, the cream on the cake, start to once again bolster earnings.
