Jerry Jordan, Portfolio Manager Jordan Opportunity Fund
Gerald Reid Jordan
After graduating from Harvard College in 1989, Mr. Jordan spent three years as a Position Trader for Salomon Brothers in New York City before attending The Harvard Business School. He joined Hellman, Jordan in 1996, serving as Senior Portfolio Manager for the firms Separate Account strategies as well as several limited partnerships. Mr. Jordan is the acting President of Hellman, Jordan Management Co., Inc.
What is your investment philosophy?
We believe that investing in growth stocks is the most successful strategy over time because the opportunity for earnings growth boosts share price growth. We also firmly believe in the physics theory that a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Therefore, the companies that have been growing their earnings, if you have a good understanding of why and how they run their businesses, should continue to grow them. So the likelihood of large-scale surprises should decrease and you have the potential opportunity to benefit from the company as the earnings grow.
How would you describe your strategy?
While our philosophy is to buy growth stocks, our strategy is to find four to six themes. We invest predominantly in a top-down process, starting with a general overview of the markets, the industry environment, inflation, and that leads us in a certain direction. Then we try to find themes with something big and secular going on, cyclical or underappreciated, or unnoticed by the market. We look for a discrepancy that the market didn't recognize.
Where do your investment ideas come from?
The ideas come from everywhere. We look at stocks that are performing well to try to figure out if there's something going on. Is there some theme in the market we're missing? We go through thousands of earnings reports every quarter to see if there's some industry that's jumping off the page that we hadn't been paying attention to. We read trade magazines. We read popular culture magazines. We read newspapers. We read everything. We're constantly tracking a lot of information, but we only really dig in if something strikes a chord.
What we want to do is focus only on areas that make sense to us right now. Then we have the entire organization focused on the same areas, so nothing should slip through.
There may be differences of opinion, but that's also important to the investment process. Investment by committee always seems to be a failure, so you want people who say, "This is crazy. This is a terrible idea. Why would you ever want to own this?" That forces you to go back through the concept, so there's always a back and forth that keeps the idea fresh, keeps the information going, and it always has you thinking about what might go wrong.
Investors should consider the Mutual Fund's investment objectives, risks, fees and expenses carefully before investing. This and other information is in the prospectus, a copy of which may be downloaded from this site or obtained by calling 1-888-786-5737. Please read the prospectus carefully before you invest.
Mutual fund investing involves risk. Principal loss is possible. The Fund’s investment parameters are diverse and as such may be subject to different forms of investment risk discussed herein. The Fund invests in foreign securities which involve greater volatility and political, economic and currency risks and differences in accounting methods. The Fund invests in smaller companies, additional risks such as limited liquidity and greater volatility. The Fund is non-diversified, meaning it may concentrate its assets in fewer individual holdings than a diversified which involve fund. Therefore, the Fund is more exposed to individual stock volatility than a diversified fund. Investment by the Fund in lower-rated and non-rated securities presents a greater risk of loss to principal and interest than higher-rated securities. Investments in debt securities typically decrease in value when interest rates rise. This risk is usually greater for longer-term debt securities. The Fund may use derivatives such as options to increase its exposure to certain securities. These techniques will result in greater volatility for the Fund, particularly in periods of market declines.
