HEDGEfolios year-to-date stock performance for 2008 (through 04/30/08 close) was up 9.08%.

Over the same time period, the S&P 500 index was down -5.61%.

At the end of April, the HEDGEfolios universe consisted of 3,433 stocks.

Commentary: April was a very positive month for the market and since I averaged 81% UP signals during April, HEDGEfolios participated in the rally.  Now that the Fed Funds rate has been lowered to 2% and there is not much more the Fed can do, the bulls are now having to rest most of their case on a strange mix of positives and negatives.  They want to applaud earnings ex-financials and the concept that the worst is over in financials.  They want to see enough economic weakness to lower commodity prices.  They want to cheer exports and currency translation benefits and they also want to see the dollar strengthen.  They want a lot of things to create the appearance of a soft landing.  As positive as HEDGEfolios signals are at the moment, I doubt the soft landing concept and I doubt HEDGEfolios will stay so positive during May.

• 2007, HEDGEfolios performance was +21.78% vs. + 3.55% for the S&P 500 index
• 2006, HEDGEfolios performance was +25.54% vs. +13.62% for the S&P 500 index
• 2005, HEDGEfolios performance was +19.99% vs. + 3.00% for the S&P 500 index
• 2004, HEDGEfolios performance was +31.19% vs. + 9.00% for the S&P 500 index

Disclaimer: Nothing in my performance quoting is intended as an advertisement or in any other way meant to encourage anyone to subscribe to HEDGEfolios. These performance figures have not been audited or verified by an outside party and are NOT in compliance with the CFA’s AIMR Performance Presentation Standards. They don’t net out any transaction costs such as commissions or management fees and are not a total return calculation as I do not include dividend yields or any compounding factor. These performance figures cover a hypothetical portfolio of the entire HEDGEfolios stock universe with an equal weighting of each security. The calculation is simply the cumulative total of all gains and losses from the signals during the period in question.