HEDGEfolios year-to-date stock performance for 2008 (through 09/30/08 close) was up 28.86%.

Over the same time period, the S&P 500 index was down -20.55%.

At the end of September, the HEDGEfolios universe consisted of 3,354 stocks.

Commentary: HEDGEfolios was able to advance approximately 3% during a month that saw the S&P decline about 8%.  Throughout the month, HEDGEfolios had weekly moves that ranged from +1.9% to -0.9% and from September 22nd through the end of the month, it varied no more than 30bps.  Compare that low volatility to the massive swings in the indexes.  On August 11, 2008, HEDGEfolios was sitting at 80% UP signals.  For the past few months I have been advocating moving towards a very neutral position and ended the month at 43% UP signals.

Prior Years’ Performance:

• 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.