Third Avenue Funds: Manager Commentary & Semi-Annual Report

Below is the semi-annual report from Marty Whitman's Third Avenue Funds. In it, you'll find portfolio manager commentary from their Value Fund, Small-Cap Value Fund, Real Estate Value Fund, International Value Fund, and Focused Credit Fund. We typically like to highlight intriguing market commentary from fund managers and you can view all our posts via our posts on hedge fund investor letters.

Turning to Third Avenue's latest missive, we get commentary on numerous topics. Most notably though, is the Chairman's letter from Marty Whitman. While his commentary these days is obviously less frequent than it once was, it's still always interesting to get his take on things. Last time around, he was out defending the managed mutual fund space. This time around, his letter focuses on 'eight areas of financial misunderstanding' including the "too big to fail" concept. While he readily admits that he is prejudiced since he is from the mutual fund industry, he attributes that a lot of success in his industry stems from strict regulation. As such, he argues that strict regulation of financial institutions is absolutely imperative.

Below is the latest commentary from Whitman as well as the portfolio managers of the various Third Avenue funds:



You can download a .pdf here.

If you want to learn more about Whitman and his value investing philosophies, we point you of course to his book, The Aggressive Conservative Investor. Interestingly enough, this book has landed on legendary investor Seth Klarman's recommended reading list as well. That testimonial obviously speaks for itself.

Marty Whitman & Third Avenue's Investor Letter

For those interested, here is Marty Whitman's latest investor letter for his Third Avenue Management. In his first quarter 2010 commentary, he sets out to defend managed mutual funds. At the same time though, he highlights some intriguing points about markets and has some nice quotes. Most notably, he writes, "Value investors, control investors, distressed investors and skilled short sellers, tend to be very much involved in the in-depth fundamental analysis that permits them to make reasoned judgments about the existence of inefficient pricing". In the past, we've also posted up Whitman's fourth quarter '09 commentary as well.

Embedded below is Third Avenue's latest series of fund manager commentaries:



You can directly download the .pdf here.

If you're interested in more fund manager commentaries, check out the rest of the various hedge fund investor letters we've posted and scroll through all of them.

Marty Whitman & Third Avenue's Investor Letter (Q4 2009)

Embedded below is Marty Whitman and Third Avenue's Q4 2009 investor letter and market commentary for your perusal:




You can also download the .pdf here. Additionally, you can read Marty Whitman's Q2 letter here, as well as some more of Third Avenue's previous commentary here.

Third Avenue Investor Letter (Marty Whitman)

Below is Marty Whitman's Q2 2009 letter for Third Avenue Funds investors. RSS & Email readers may need to come to the blog to view the material. If you're having trouble printing the document (margin errors), then open it up in Scribd, download it, and print the .pdf from your desktop. Hat tip to our friends over at ValuePlays for posting it up!

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