Crabtree Commentary

April 20, 2012

Today rounded out the first week of first quarter earnings season. Four Crabtree holdings reported: IBM, Verizon, Entegris and Electronics for Imaging. All four of the companies met or slightly exceeded Street expectations. All four companies also offered guidance that was as good or better than Street estimates. In fact, IBM's forward EPS guidance was better than not only the Street, but its own prior guidance.

Next week will  bring Q1 financial reports from at least at dozen more Crabtree Fund holdings, but we're glad to have already gotten off to a good start.

March 20, 2012

Don't forget: today and tomorrow we'll be available for questions at the NextInvest Conference. Just register - it's free - and click on our sponsor booth, then locate the "Chat Room" tab. We'll be here, ready to answer any and all questions. Don't forget to view our video too!

March 2, 2012

Our re-balancing is now complete, with the sale of Sykes, the addition of Nippon Telephone and Zillow and a trim of OSI Systems.

February 24, 2012

We've nearly completed the mid-February re-balancing of the Crabtree Fund. The following holdings have been sold: Consolidated Graphics, Cohu, Digi International, ESCO, Electro-Scientific, Harris, Invacare, Lattice Semiconductor, Rofin-Sinar, Symantec, TechTarget and VECO and Vonage. We also trimmed our positions in Astronics, Insight Enterprises, Perficient and Rudolph Technologies, returning these to 2% positions in the portfolio.

Replacing our sells are the following new 2% positions: Amdocs, Tele Norte Leste Participacoes, AeroVironment, Tetra Tech, Heartland Payment, Acuity Brands, Medidata Solutions, GSI Group, DSP Group, Anika Therapeutics, CalAmp and Magic Software. All of the new additions are from our quantitative model.

We may make one or two more changes in the next few days, but otherwise the portfolio is set for the next three months.