A Little MFM Math Problem

    This is taken from just last week:

    Ariel Fund is up 41.42% for the year coming into the trading day.

For the day, Ariel increases by 1.06%.

Now how much is Ariel Fund up for the year?

    The Moron's knee-jerk answer was, of course, 42.48%.

    The Moron's knee-jerk answer was, of course, wrong.

The right answer, for reasons that become obvious upon just a small amount of reflection:

42.92%

Two Days to Go in 2013

    With two days to go in 2013, we still don't have  a Fund of the Year. Over at Morningstar, the Fund of the year is chosen by committee, based on a complex and esoteric formula which probably includes objective, subjective, and whimsical factors. Here at MFM, nothing is complex, and we don't even know what esoteric means! Our Fund of the Year is simply that fund which gains the most (or loses the least) in a given calendar year.

    Last year, Fairhome ran away with it early, and never looked back. Fairholme will probably end up in the top ten this year, and may even best its percentage gain from last year, but only 2 funds are in the running for fund of the year. Those funds are Kinetics Paradigm Fund and Ariel Fund. Kinetics Paradigm led by a few percentage points for the last several months, but Ariel had a little surge in the past week, and currently it's like this:

Ariel .........................   +44.07%

Kinetics Paradigm..... + 43.48%

    Either fund could win it. It will just come down to two trading days and simple dumb luck.