Is this as good as it gets ?, page-22

Para. 3.3 of the original Wilson Leaders prospectus lists thePortfolio Committee consisting of Wilson, Kidman and Braitling as the CIO.Braitlin can therefore take the lion’s share of the credit or blame for allALF’s performance.

The share price on an end of month basis was above $1.70 on30/9/13 and then for four straight months to 31/8/14. Up until this point dividendstotalled 80c. There had also been an opportunity for the nimble at the peak tomake heaps from a post listing options issue when the options weresignificantly over valued against a share price that was in turn significantlyover valued against the NTA. Pure luck that I needed cash at the time and sold. On the 31/8/14 thepost tax NTA was $1.40. Since then the fund has basically been of the marketneutral variety. There has been 32c of mostly franked divs and the most recentNTA on 30/9/18 was $1.20.

Some (very?) rough calculations, using NTAs, divs andmaking a few assumptions on tax rates etc and ignoring the options (they eventuallyexpired worthless!):- In the first ten years the Braitlin run mostly long WLS /ALF made abouty 8% pa. Since then, using the same assumptions, the Braitlin run effectivelymarket neutral ALF has over the the past four years made about 2%. The 8% would have beenbroadly in line with the ASX 200 Accumulation over the earlier period and the2% about what extra the company would have got from extra cash they wereholding during the latter period.

The obvious conclusions one can draw from this are thatBraitlin’s stock picking prowess neither added or subtracted value, while his bigcall on market direction has clearly been wrong. In summary, history suggests that if he maintainsthe market neutral stance performance will likely be what their cash is earningregardless of which way the market heads and if he decides to go long againperformance will basically match the index. Your call on whether the currentdiscount is sufficient enticement to buy.