Advisor Liquidates Fund He Created

Ever toyed with the notion of becoming a mutual fund manager? One veteran financial advisor who lived the dream for two and a half years before resigning last fall has a two-fold message for advisors contemplating the move: Get used to dealing with faceless clients and fickle market-timers‚ assets, which flow in and out at the most inopportune times.

Ram Kolluri, who now devotes all of his energies to building his $180 million investment-advisory firm, Global Value Investors in Princeton, N.J., says it was a mutual business decision in September 2000 to liquidate the Navellier Global Equity Fund. He founded the fund just 30 months before with Reno, Nev.-based fund company president Louis Navellier‚s blessing.

What went wrong? The quantitative international research model Kolluri developed to screen stocks for the fund was eclipsed by an event beyond his control: The introduction of the euro, which drove many of the 11-member-country currencies down by as much as 30%. They‚ve since tumbled further.

"It was a business decision. I had to decide, given the currency volatility, if I wanted to do international investing full time or domestic. The parting was friendly," Kolluri says. "The research we developed is very useful to us today. I take away that experience and a lot of humility."

Today, he gets his international fix through a global value index he‚s built, which screens for companies like Honda, Nestle, Nokia and Sony. To make the index, companies must have 25% of their sales in the United States (which means they have a treasurer who manages currency risk), a minimum daily volume of 50,000 shares and at least two U.S. analysts covering the stock.

Another mutual fund in the making, perhaps? "I‚m not closing the door, but I‚m building domestic assets first," says Kolluri, who maintains that the United States‚ market dominance will not change in his lifetime.

Record Number Register To Take CFA Exam

Falling fortunes on Wall Street apparently haven‚t stopped people from wanting to make a career out of market analysis. A record number of people have registered to take the 2001 Chartered Financial Analyst exam on June 2, says the Association for Investment Management and Research, which administers the test.

A record 86,421 people–including securities analysts, money managers, investment advisors and students representing 143 countries–have signed up to take the test, the association says. That‚s 15% more than a year ago and more than triple the 28,000 people who signed up for the test in 1995, the association says.

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