- Are IRAs offered by Weitz Funds?
- Are the Funds offered for sale in all states?
- What is the minimum initial investment?
- Are there plans to close any of the Funds?
- Do you manage separate accounts?
- What are the differences among the stock funds?
We offer Traditional, SEP, and Roth IRAs (IRAs are not permitted in the Nebraska Tax-Free Income Fund). We do not offer Educational IRAs or 403B plans.
Each of the Funds, with the exception of Nebraska Tax-Free Income Fund, is available for sale in all states, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Nebraska Tax-Free Income Fund is available for sale in Nebraska and other select states/territories.
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The minimum investment required to open an account is $2,500 per Fund, except Research Fund and the Institutional Class shares of Partners III Opportunity and Short-Intermediate Income Funds, all of which have a $25,000 minimum initial investment. The subsequent minimum investment requirement for all of the Funds and share classes is $25.
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The Hickory Fund, which was closed to new investors in 1998, was reopened on January 5, 2004. We have no present intent to close any of the other Funds.
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If you are an institutional investor and are interested in separate account management, please contact Yana Morgan at (800) 304-9745 or via our secure contact form.
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At Weitz Funds, we take a value-oriented, long-term approach to investing. In
implementing our strategy, we focus on finding strong, growing, well-managed
companies priced significantly below their true business value.
Our
family of funds is designed to offer a range of investment options for
investors with different objectives and temperaments. There are differences in
fund size, portfolio concentration and volatility. There are five different Weitz
equity funds and one balanced fund. Each Fund's prospectus allows it considerable
flexibility, but the following general characterizations of each Fund might be
helpful. "Conservative" is a relative term, but in our opinion, the list progresses
roughly from most conservative to least.
Balanced Fund is a combination of a stock fund and a bond
fund. Its portfolio must include at least 25% stocks and 25% bonds; the remaining 50%
will be a changing mix of stocks and bonds, depending on their relative
attractiveness. The stock portion of the Balanced Fund invests in companies of any
size and is more diversified and less concentrated than our other Funds.
Value Fund is a subset of our favorite large- and medium-sized
company ideas. Companies with a market cap of over $10 billion constitute a majority
of the Fund, with a fair representation of mid-sized companies as well. Because large
companies are perceived in the market place to be less volatile than smaller companies,
Value Fund may be subject to fewer fluctuations than Hickory Fund, for example.
Partners Value Fund is a go-anywhere, all-cap fund. The
portfolio includes a collection of our favorite companies, regardless of size and
regardless of industry. Partners Value typically has a more concentrated portfolio
(fewer positions and larger average position sizes) than our other equity Funds.
Hickory Fund invests in small- to medium-sized
companies (those with a market cap below $10 billion) and may also invest in some
speculative issues. Since Hickory is less diversified and holds smaller companies
than our other Funds, it might also be more volatile. Hickory Fund is a more
aggressive application of our investment philosophy.
Research Fund was originally launched in April 2005 as a private
partnership. The Fund may invest in securities of any market capitalization. Research Fund
is co-managed by the members of our research analyst team. Each analyst (co-portfolio
manager) is assigned a portion of the Fund's assets (a sleeve) and is responsible
for selecting investments within that portion of the Fund, under the supervision of
Weitz & Co.'s Director of Research.
Partners III Opportunity Fund ("Partners III") is the
successor to Weitz Partners-III, one of our original private partnerships. Partners III
has the broadest toolkit of our equity funds: it invests in companies of all sizes; it
is allowed to borrow money to leverage its investments; and it typically maintains short
positions to help manage risk.
The use of borrowed money magnifies both gains and losses, thus adding an element of risk
to the portfolio. None of the other Funds currently uses borrowed money. As for short
sales, the other Funds occasionally use short sales in the case of a merger to "lock in"
a takeover premium, but historically Partners III is the only Weitz Fund that routinely
sells short both individual stocks and groups of stocks such as exchange traded index
funds (ETFs). Short sales may be used defensively as hedges against certain risks in
the "long" portfolio or aggressively to try to profit from a decline in a stock
or group of stocks.
Over its 25+ year history, Partners III has benefitted from its ability to take short
positions. The ways in which Partners III has historically used short sales are:
- Offensive shorts—shorting stocks we think will go down;
- Shorting a segment of the stock universe that we think is expensive (tech stocks, small caps, etc.);
- Pair or convergence trades that seek to take advantage of a mispricing of two securities, relative to each other;
- Broader hedges in which we buy extra shares of our favorite stocks and sell short expensive ones to maintain a given level of net exposure to stocks.
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