“Dear Bill….”: A Letter to Bill Miller, Manager, Legg Mason Value Trust

Dear Bill,
I hope you are well these days, I understand it’s been a difficult time for you lately, and I’d imagine you’ve had many sleepless nights. I trust that there are better days ahead for you. I hope for your sake, as well as for others who have trusted you with their money, that this is indeed the case.

When I hired you several years ago to manage a nice chunk of my retirement portfolio’s large cap allocation, I did so knowing that our investment philosophies are quite different. We view “value” in very different terms, but that was ok. I understood the differences, and I took the risk. I was actually quite pleased that my company’s 401K plan brought you aboard.

We had a great run, Bill. In fact, your streak began years before I hired you, and I certainly did not expect it to continue forever. After all, how many managers beat the S&P 500 Index 15 consecutive years? You did, Bill. But just like all streaks, yours came to an end. Unfortunately a very abrupt and painful end; more painful than either of us could have ever imagined.

When I hired you, I never dreamed I’d be writing you this letter. But after a great deal of thought, it pains me that I am hereby replacing you as my primary large cap manager. I can no longer take the risk that your investment process is indeed broken, or is no longer effective.

I know, Bill, every active manager hits bumps in the road, and the market environment has been extremely difficult. But your underperformance the past two years has gone way beyond normal market gyrations.

How is it possible that you are down 32% year to date, or 39% over the past year? Looking back, do you think that your positions were too concentrated in financials? Yes, Bill, I know hindsight is 20/20, and I sound a bit like Captain Obvious here, but Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Freddie Mac, AIG, Countrywide? Where was your risk control? Was it deep conviction or wishful thinking on your part that financials would turn around? I know that what has transpired over the past couple of years in financials was essentially the perfect storm, but I hired you because I trusted that you’d be able to navigate even the worst market events. I certainly never expected things to turn out like this.

Unfortunately, your recent performance has been so devastating that it essentially renders your 15 year streak irrelevant. Over the past five years, you’ve underperformed the S&P 500 by more than 800 basis points…per year. Over the past ten years, you are under 90 bps per year. You have to go back to 1996 in order to find a multi-year period (through now) that you’ve outperformed. Guess I should have indexed large cap all along. My bad.

Unfortunately Bill, what many investors fail to understand is that average returns are meaningless. What truly matters is the time path of returns, i.e., the order in which returns occur. Your huge losses the past couple years all but wipe out the previous gains your shareholders enjoyed.

Finally, Bill, just a word of advice about where you are spending your time these days. I know you want the Yahoo situation to work out to the advantage of your shareholders, and you do hold a fairly large position in the company (4% of your portfolio). But are you devoting too much time and energy to this?

In closing, I can’t place all of the blame on you. I should have pulled the trigger several % ago. I admit I got too caught up in “Bill Miller: The Legend”.

Bill, best wishes for the future.

Regards,

Jon