Unlike most other high school kids, Carrie Luckner actually enjoyed economics. She found the models, theories, and charts in those classes rationally explained situations in everyday life, while highlighting the harsh reality of scarcity with respect to time and money. Carrie’s real interest in investing, though, came in college during an investments class. There, she learned approaches to overcoming this scarcity by putting money to work in a variety of businesses and earning a return through price appreciation and/or dividend income.
After college, Carrie built upon her natural interest in investing by entering the financial profession. She now has ten years of experience in finance, with seven spent as a long/short equity trader (specializing in industrial, consumer, tech, REIT and health care portfolios) at a $4 billion hedge fund. She passed and held series 6, 7 and 63 licenses.
While working in finance, Carrie built a personal portfolio. She began with mutual funds, then branched out into holding a few utility and pharmaceutical DRP’s, and then later diversified into a broad stock portfolio. Carrie says her approach cannot be pidgeonholed into any single method. Her purchases and sales can be based on one or several factors, but really what she is looking for are market inefficiencies, usually characterized by price action relative to the overall market or sector, and her emphasis is mainly on mid-large cap US equities across all sectors, excluding biotech and pharmaceuticals.
Carrie recently began managing Covestor’s new Long-Short Hedged model, which she describes in this manner:
This is an actively managed, aggressive, long/short equity portfolio based on market timing and perceived value. Short-term trading, with an emphasis on realizing gains and dollar cost averaging longer-term holdings.
The typical number of holdings is approximately 10-20 companies and/or ETFs or closed-end funds. The portfolio is generally hedged using index or commodity ETF’s, though that is not a mandate.
Current top holdings (as of 6/2) include United States Steel Corp (NYSE: X), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO)
