PROFILE

Horizon Asset Management Inc., founded in 1994, is an independent research and wealth management provider. This New York based firm set up jointly by Murray Stahl, Peter Doyle and Steven Bregman now manages assets worth over $9.2 billion[1]. One of the articles published on www.seekingalpha.com mentions that “during the past decade, Horizon outperformed the market in eight years and has a cumulative excess return of 65.1%”. [2]

One of the co-founding members Murray Stahl, who serves as the chairman and chief investment officer at Horizon Asset Management Inc., has been rated among the smartest investors in the world. His extraordinary pickings of stock and investment have laid down new rules for investors to follow and beat the market.

Stahl started his career as a utility analyst. As a value investor in early 1980’s, he recommended all investors to buy shares of much troubled General Public Utilities. Those who followed his advice did make a lot of money. Since its inception, the investment philosophy and strategy adopted by Horizon truly reflects value investing.

In a situation where many investors are trying hard to survive the financial melt down, chief investment officer at Horizon Asset Management Inc. is growing stronger, looking for buying opportunities. Stahl’s leading maneuvers included adding shares in Howard Hughes (HHC), Leucadia National (LUK), and CBOE Holdings (CBOE) to his name. [3]

Stahl initially acquired Howard Hughes (HHC) in the first quarter of 2011. He was reported to buy 1,519,489 shares of the stock at an average price of $58.36. In most recent move, Stahl added another 2,640,113 shares at an average price of $67.25, impacting his portfolio by 2.51%. This action was successful in giving him a total of 4,159,602 total shares of the company.

Now, Murray Stahl held more than 17.6 million shares of Leucadia when the stock was traded at a value of $45.10 back in the first quarter of 2008. He sold 4.8 million shares in the next quarter when the average prices of shares increased to $51.63, but the scenario then changed. The share prices quickly dropped to lower than $16 in less than a year.

During this time, Murray Stahl sold another 11 million of Leucadia shares, and he continued to sell another 1 million shares when prices fluctuated a bit in late 2009 and early 2010. When the stock prices began to improve and started climbing back up again in late 2010 and early 2011, Stahl made a move. He added 64.96% to his position thereby impacting his portfolio by 2.33%. These maneuvers gave him a whooping 11,877,583 total shares in Leucadia.

Stahl began his current position in CBOE Holdings in the last quarter of 2010, purchasing a total of 1,269,166 shares at an average price of $23.32. He then slightly reduced his position in 2011 when he sold 175,700 of his shares. In his most recent move, Stahl added 570.23% to his position by buying shares at an average price of $26.06, giving him a total number of 7,328,719 shares. This impacted his portfolio by 2.24%.

Horizon Asset Management’s investment philosophy is centered on mitigation of risk and believes in identifying, assessing and prioritizing risks for its clients. This prevents unfortunate impact to a great degree. Investment philosophy at Horizon, lays strong emphasis on the use of resources to tackle uncertainties in the financial market.

In the current economic conditions, risks have become an inherent part of financial markets and investments. The methods used by Horizon are based on in-depth research of the market and employ resources that help avoid the risk or reduce the negative implications of a particular risk.

Horizon Asset Management Inc. has been serving its clients since 1994 with a competent team that now has over 80 employees. Investment team at Horizon has 18 professionals which have tremendous amount of experience in the related field. With an average term of 8 years in the firm and overall 17 years in the investment industry, these individuals are exclusively committed to help the clients.

Risk management is one of the prominent features at Horizon where the dedicated team is available for assessing risk in terms of the probability of real capital loss. It is the loss acquired when a capital asset such as real estate or investment decreases in value.

Investment strategies followed at Horizon Asset Management can be divided in to 2 main classes namely Sponsored Strategies and Direct or Institutional Strategies.

Core Value is a part of sponsored strategy and was started in January 1996. Steven Bregman who has about 26 years of experience in investment is the Portfolio Manager for Core Value investment strategy.

Murray Stahl has been managing all of the investment strategies at Horizon Asset Management since its inception. Core value investment strategy adopted by Horizon mainly focuses on the businesses that are shielded from fierce price competition or have eliminated use of technology.

This strategy prefers investment in business that can continue with a high return on equity (ROE). As for the approach, core value strategy by Horizon utilizes a reverse attitude compared to rest of the investment approaches.

Portfolio weightings obtained as a result of adopting the strategy may replicate favorable risk or reward in specific sectors. This strategy by Horizon Asset Management has enabled the “Core Value Fund” to produce a ten year return of 81.5%. This value has simply outperformed the S&P 500′s return of total 16.4%. (S&P 500 is a stock market index maintained by Standard and Poor’s and covers about 75% of the total American Equity Market by capitalization).

Investment Approach defined in Core Value investment is “value oriented” i.e. it is long term. This involves investment in companies that have products with long life cycles. Core value also picks up companies that are said to be “insulated business models” trading at attractive values.

The core value strategy though may be used to invest across all market capitalizations, but usually it tends to focus on investing in middle to large capitalization companies.

Horizon Asset Management focuses on maintaining long term investment perspective. Usually significant portfolio turnovers which average 20 to 25% annually are avoided. Each portfolio investment typically holds 25 to 50 securities and the position sizes range from 0.5% to 8.0%. Net cumulative growth is $100.

When talking about the companies in which investment can made, core value investment strategy by Horizon can also be used to invest in non-US companies and may also take part in “special situation opportunities” on a limited basis.

Typical duration of investment is 5 years and more with S&P 500 set as the representative standard to measure returns.

Research Select is another investment approach which comes under Sponsored Strategies by Horizon Asset Management. The research is targeted to find out investment opportunities including those which may be catalyst or event driven.

Most of the time hidden assets are neglected in major investment approaches by other firms but Horizon makes extra efforts to find out about assets which may be hidden but investing in them may prove to be very fruitful.

Research Select Approach is not only limited to investing in large established companies but generally most of the strategy holdings are companies which come under small to mid capitalization companies. A typical Portfolio involving this strategy will reveal investment in 25 to 45 securities which have position sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8 %.

Like core value, research select strategy also seeks to avoid considerable portfolio turnovers which have a history of averaging 20 to 25% per annum. All portfolios in this category are headed by Steven Bregman since inception in January 1998.

Typical time of investment in this strategy is 5 years or more and S&P 500 has been set as a representative benchmark to evaluate returns obtained as a result of adopting this strategy.

As it has been mentioned earlier that Horizon Asset Management is determined to serve its clients in investment research and portfolio management so the best in business are responsible to manage the operations.

Each client is served on individual basis and since inception in 1994; the firm is working hard to generate attractive and extraordinary results. Horizon Asset Management Inc has research analysts that are peers in researching opportunities worldwide and recommend companies for investment after thorough analysis.

The philosophy of increasing the time horizon mainly emphasizes on the fact of long term investments that prove to be extremely valuable. Each investment is made with a solid logical reasoning and a proper perspective.

Horizon Asset Management has been an independent publisher of research for institutional investment since 1995 and till date has continued to provide high quality services for its clients with an outstanding operational infrastructure for all the activities.

People behind Horizon Asset Management believe that to be a good value investor, an individual needs to have patience and strong discipline. This point is made more evident by the philosophy and investment approach followed by the firm. Horizon considers patience and determination to be the most crucial tools for any investor who wishes to make it big in the business.

Talking about making it big, this firm has definitely made a lot of growth as the company has grown to over 80 employees and offices in New York City and Elmsford NY. Any successful value investing strategy would be incomplete without considering a margin of safety. In simple terms, margin of safety is waiting for fruitful opportunities to come up or pay off.

Value investors should be capable of spotting the right opportunities and this task is made really easy by the team of experts at Horizon. There are plenty of investment approaches making up Institutional or Direct strategies.

Large Cap Institutional Composite is an investment option in large capitalization companies, a strategy which is often underestimated and misunderstood. This involves investing in companies for which investors lack the ability to differentiate between permanent and transitory problems. The approach particularly focuses on underlying earnings and sector concentrations.

Though the name states large cap, this type of investment approach can be used for all types of market capitalizations even non US companies. The assets currently under management look very promising and since its start in January 1996, the portfolios for this category are managed by one of the best investor, Murray Stahl.

Other Institutional or Direct strategies followed by Horizon include:

Research Select Institutional Composite managed by Steven Bregman. This investment strategy focuses on small to mid capitalization companies which may not be very mature or have a superior market position.
Small Cap Institutional Composite managed by Murray Stahl is an answer to investment options in small and emerging companies. This does not rule out the possibility of investing in companies that are more mature and have a strong market position.
Strategic Value Institutional Composite managed by Murray Stahl gives flexible investment options across numerous securities in market capitalizations. This is a unique blend of all investment strategies followed at Horizon Asset Management Inc.
Spin off Institutional Composite led by Murray Stahl influences researching spin offs and corporate restructurings which date back to 1994. The basic idea behind this investment is to explore historical options than just newly generated opportunities. This option can be applied to both domestic and international spinoff to add more value and widen the horizon.
Global Large Cap Value Institutional Composite as the name implies looks to strike a balance between investments made in the US and non US market. Since its beginning in February 2007, investment strategy is managed by Murray Stahl with a special focus on neglected and misunderstood opportunities. Mostly large capitalization companies are preferred but the strategy can be applied across all market capitalizations.
Asia Institutional Composite managed by Murray Stahl started in January 2008. This investment approach searches for opportunities in the developing Asian economies. Businesses identified during the process are those closely related to local infrastructure.
High Yield Opportunity Institutional Composite managed by Murray Stahl is one strategy that focuses on rather troubled investment options preferably stock and convertible bonds. The process of investment generally has eyes on short to intermediate maturities which are in misery. Portfolio features securities where investment options appear limited.

Horizon Asset Management also offers Alternative Investment plans to accredited and qualified investors.

Apart from Murray Stahl and Steven Bregman, other impressive names such as Doug Kramer, Hugh Ross, Peter Doyle and Thomas Ewing are also included in the expert team at Horizon. The creative and competent team at Horizon Asset Management Inc makes sure they deliver value to each client and help them capture long term success in investment.

[1] As of June 30 2011 (http://www.horizonassetmgt.net/docs/Horizon_FirmOverview.pdf)

[2] http://seekingalpha.com/article/293065-bruce-berkowitz-and-murray-stahl-are-bullish-about-these-stocks

[3] http://www.gurufocus.com/news/143343/murray-stahl-adds-howard-hughes-leucadia-national-and-cboe-holdings