Only a single bear mutual fund, Bill Gross' Pimco Stocksplus TR Short Strategy Fund [see profile], beat the market over the past five years. That's one of the tidbits included in Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam's Bloomberg article on bear funds last week.

The wire service worries that bear funds aren't actually delivering the protection they're aiming for. According to Morningstar data, bear funds were the worst performing mutual fund category (out of 90 categories!) over the past decade, losing 10 percent annually during the so-called lost decade.

The Pimco bear fund returned 3.1 percent on average for the past five years, compared to 2.5 percent for the S&P 500. Lake Partners co- chairman Rick Lake, Federated Prudent Bear Fund co-PM Douglas Noland [see profile] and Morningstar analyst Nadia Papagiannis all weighed in for the article. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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