- 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, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Nebraska Tax-Free Income is available for sale in Nebraska and other select states. Contact a Weitz Funds Client Services representative at (800) 304-9745 for further information.
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The minimum investment required to open an account in any of the Funds is $2,500 per Fund. The subsequent minimum investment requirement 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 four 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.
Partners III Opportunity Fund is the successor to one of
our original private partnerships, Weitz Partners-III. Like Hickory, Partners III
Opportunity ("Partners III") is a smaller, more flexible and more aggressively managed
portfolio. However, Partners III has two important differences from Hickory and the
other stock Funds: it is allowed to borrow money to leverage its investments and
it regularly sells short.
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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