The worm has turned on yet another star mutual fund PM.

Stephen Foley of the Financial Times and Kirsten Grind of the Wall Street Journal both report on the 2014 woes of the MainStay Marketfield Fund [profile], PMed by Michael Aronstein. Through Christmas Eve, the fund lost 12.4 percent this year, compared to a 14.9 percent gain for the S&P 500 and putting the fund 97th out of 100 in its Morningstar peer group. Its assets have fallen 45 percent from their peak in February, making it number eight on Morningstar’s list of the funds suffering the greatest outflows of 2014.

“It’s just been a terrible year,” Aronstein tells the WSJ. “My performance has been horrendous.”

On the flip side, the fund quadrupled in size in 2013.

Other liquid alternative players may want to pay attention to what’s happening to Marketfield. Both the FT and the WSJ wonder if Marketfield is a harbinger of woes for other liquid alternative funds.

“MainStay Marketfield was a gateway drug into the liquid alts space and attracted outside money that had not been in alternatives before,” Morningstar analyst Josh Charney tells the FT.

“The fall is a blow to a segment of the investment world that has exploded in popularity,” the WSJ writes.

“Overhyped, overpriced and underperforming,” is one burned advisor’s description of Marketfield. Ouch. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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