Knowledge Management: The Kennel
“Net-net, Intelledgement’s solutions enable me to focus on doing what I do best.”
— H. Glenn Chaney, Chief Strategist, The Kennel
Who is the customer?
The Kennel Wolfpack Macro Opportunity Fund is a macro strategy-based investment fund. The objective of the fund is, on a compounded annual growth rate basis, to provide a return that matches or exceeds the Greenwich Alternative Investements (GAI) Hedge Fund index, which since 1988 is running ahead of the S&P 500 +13% to +7% on an annualized basis (compounded annual growth rate/CAGR). The Kennel management aim to achieve this result by integrating macro analysis with technical analysis to identify investments that are both likely to be significantly undervalued strategically and unlikely to sink lower tactically. Fundamental analysis is then employed to sort out the best bet racing hounds from the mere dogs.
What needed to be done?
The Kennel’s Chief Strategist and resident guru, H. Glenn Chaney, has years of experience as an active political operative and geo-political analyst. For several years, he has been posting a unique blend of analytical commentary and investment advice on various public internet message boards, where he has established a considerable following.
Mr. Chaney is very concerned about the future of civilization in general and of the USA in particular. He conceived the notion that his concerns—and associated prescriptions for addressing these concerns—could gain more currency if he could create a legitimate vehicle for communicating them. He noticed that while his primary concern was the state of the nation and the world, his analyses consistently yielded lucrative investment opportunities as a welcome side benefit. And, he noted, lacing his analyses with potentially profitable stock tips got them more attention.
In order to draw attention both to his concerns and his solutions, Mr. Chaney needed a dedicated forum where he could both document and promote his investment prowess as a hook to gain attention and organize and present his geopolitical analyses to the consequent audience.
Why choose Intelledgement?
“I am the best at what I do, and I’ve got more great ideas than I could see through in two lifetimes,” stated Chaney. “But I’ll be the first to admit I am a bit gizmo-challenged. Intelledgement proposed a solution that leverages the body of work I already had and made it easy for me to communicate with folks interested in what I have to say.”
What was Intelledgement’s solution?
Intelledgement recommended three specific actions to facilitate the dissemination of The Kennel message.
First, while Mr. Chaney has a reputation as a great stock picker, there was no hard evidence to measure precisely how great. Intelledgement proposed a research project to document all of Mr. Chaney’s investment recommendations as posted on public message boards going back to October 2002.
Secondly, in order to establish a more readily verifiable record going forward, Intelledgement proposed the establishment of a Marketocracy portfolio for The Kennel. Marketocracy is a website that affords their approximately 60,000 subscribers a virtual $1 million to invest and tracks the results. The picks of the 100 most successful competitors are blended to make investment decisions for a $11M real-money mutual fund.
Thirdly, to facilitate the organization and presentation of the various outputs of The Kennel—which can include general commentary on geo-political and economic events or situations, buy or sell recommendations concerning specific investments, and historical performance data among others—Intelledgement recommended The Kennel establish a web presense with listserv and message board capability to enable Mr. Chaney to communicate with his subscribers.
In addition to these actions, Intelledgement also recommended that The Kennel recruit and engage an information broker to manage their IP assets, thereby enabling Mr. Chaney to concentrate on research and analysis.
How did the solution work?
The first step was to document Mr. Chaney’s historical performance as an investment guru. Intelledgement personnel sifted through public message boards—thousands of messages—to document postings Mr. Chaney had made recommending buys and sells going back over a year. Intelledgement developed a methodology for scoring these postings. (E.g., as the posts were all timestamped, the closing price at the end of the day was used for all messages posted when the market was open and the opening price of the next session was used for all messages posted when the market was closed.) Compiled and published as “Brick’s Picks,” the research discovered that Mr. Chaney had published 58 recommendations between October 2002 and November 2003 (when the Marketocracy portfololio was launched), and another 120 recommendations through 30 December 2005. It turns out that through 30 December 2005, someone following Mr. Chaney’s recommendations would have held each position for an average 219 days and obtained a return of 31%, a compounded annual growth rate of 57%. So this phase of the project was a smashing success.
While Mr. Chaney’s performance going back to October 2002 was now documented, anyone who wanted to verify it would still need to do a fair amount of work accessing dozens of old message board postings and the risk of some of those older messages (or boards) being deleted by the hosts grows over time. Realistically, it is more compelling to have performance bona fides that are pre-verified by a credible third party. Therefore, Intelledgement set up a Marketocracy portfolio for The Kennel in November of 2003. The Marketocracy rules imposed limits on The Kennel portfolio with respect to the relative size of the largest positions (none over 25% and no more than four over 10% of the fund assets), arbitrarily banned some securities, and did not support options (even covered calls) or commodities trading. In addition, Marketocracy charged breathtakingly large commissions on trades, and took a long time to execute them, precluding the opportunity to act on technical analysis in some circumstances.
Despite these limitations—and despite a misadventure with gold mining stocks in 2004— The Kennel Wolfpack Macro Opportunity Fund was ranked #18 out of approximately 60,000 managed portfolios on the Marketocracy site in their 31 March 2006 listing, at which point it had a since-inception CAGR of 31% compared with 10% for the GAI Hedge Fund index (31 Oct 03 to 31 Mar 06). So the second phase of the project also succeeded.
The third leg of the project comprised the construction of an independent web presence for The Kennel. Functional design discussions with Mr. Chaney uncovered a need not just for listserv/message board capabilities but also for a subscription requirement so that access to the material could be limited to by-invitation only. Intelledgement selected the Yahoo! Group technology as the best fit, as while control over the interface is very limited, it does provide all the functionality needed by The Kennel and is easy to configure. The Kennel's site has been in continuous operation since early 2004.
Intelledgement’s solution required a modicum of maintenance work to keep the site current. While Mr. Chaney provides the lion’s share of the analytical content, and additional content is provided by subscribers, he preferred not to commit himself to a rigid publication schedule. Ultimately, The Kennel contracted Intelledgement to provide some content and administrative support on an ongoing basis. Intelledgement distributes “Kennel Rations,” a weekly compendium of news related to the portfolio’s particular investments, writes most buy/sell alerts, handles subscriptions and customer service, and posts performance data on The Kennel website as appropriate.
Bottom line: is the customer satisfied?
“In my life, I've been able to help a lot of people and have a positive impact,” stated Chaney. “Intelledgement has enabled me to leverage my efforts to reach more folks than I could have on my own, short of landing a TV contract. We have stuck with them to actively manage our information because they understand what we are trying to communicate so well that their solutions with respect to how transmit our message invariably help us advance the ball. Net-net, Intelledgement’s solutions enable me to focus on doing what I do best.”
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Established in 2003, The Kennel is a vehicle for disseminating the views and geopolitical analyses of H. Glenn Chaney, commonly known by his Yahoo! screen name (extremebricknmortar). Mr. Chaney’s investment portfolio, tracked on The Kennel’s website currently and on various public message boards prior to 2003 has generated an average compounded annual growth rate of 27% on all investments dating back to October 2002.
Established in 1999, Intelledgement, LLC is a knowledge management consulting business with extensive experience in the design and development of information collation, organization, and distribution solutions. Intelledgement has helped organizations select and implement marketing information systems, sales tracking systems, pricing configurators, employee intranets, customer extranets and much more. For more information, please visit http://www.intelledgement.com.