One day Wonder

Enjoy it big fella. Amazon will ease your pain today.

Bill Miller’s performance at the Legg Mason Value Trust is so god awful we have to avert our gaze from his numbers.

Bottom decile for the 1-Week, 1-Month, 3-Month, Year-to-date, 1-Year and 3-Year marking periods. Hardly the stuff of legend.

It would be hard not to see Miller as one of the best investment managers of his generation,” says Christine Benz, director of fund analysis at Chicago-based Morningstar Inc. “Many of the best managers run into periods of weakness.”

Mere mortals would get fired for putting up numbers comparable to Miller’s three-year numbers. And Bill is lucky Morningstar comps him to large-cap blend funds; with value outperforming growth his performance against value managers would look far worse over the past three years.

Christine Benz has made a career out of Miller, she covered him in the 90’s and hitched her star early to Miller. But she is not the only one banking on Big Bill to pull out of the nosedive. Miller is sugar daddy to dozens at Legg’s Baltimore headquarters…

Legg Mason Capital Management, which oversees $67.9 billion, grew out of Value Trust. Miller’s flagship fund and others mimicking its strategy account for $49 billion of assets under management. The rest is spread across the division’s other funds, including the $7.2 billion Legg Mason Opportunity Trust, which Miller also manages. Legg Mason Capital Management, of which Miller is chairman, has more the quadrupled its staff to 132 people since 2002. Bloomberg Magazine (pdf)

No wonder Bill is feeling the pressure; dozens of young staffers are counting on him righting the ship. And although Bill is no doubt ethical, hardworking and still in possession of glorious longer- term numbers, the last few years have been his version of “The Perfect Storm”. What have you done for us lately, Bill?

Bill will likely lead his peer group today thanks to Amazon. But the current earnings season has not been kind to him. If he does not get it going he might be spending a lot more time of that sailboat of his.

Yes, Bill has a yacht. But his fund’s shareholders, many who were late to the party, are still waiting for their ship to come in. And I doubt they are grinning.

It’s easy to grin

When his shorts aren’t too tight in the seat

-Judge Smails from Caddyshack
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