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From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: With the bear market lumbering along at a pace which indicates hibernation to be a distant event, Ron Pollack has founded US-based Mascot Capital Management to re-launch his short-biased strategy which uses a dynamically changing short/long mix to trade in and out of positions in an effort to “dance” with the market.

Background Pollack’s Dancing Bear strategy was originally managed through his previous firm Bulldog Capital Management, which he founded in 1992. The firm originally ran a traditional long/short strategy but Pollack’s prior experience with short selling pioneers the Feshbach brothers soon played a larger part in his growing, opportunistic short side positions. Pollack was pursued by some investors to offer a short-only fund, but believed that short-only was not sustainable: instead he formed what he refers to as an “inverted” long/short equity fund (one that has both longs and shorts, but which leads with the shorts rather than the longs). By 2000, Pollack was managing over $1 billion, over $550m of which was in short-biased strategies.

The Dancing Bear portfolio, with Bulldog Capital and later (after a merger) Monitor Fund Advisors as its investment managers, saw annualized net performance returns of +10.1% from 1997 – 2004. Pollack subsequently withdrew from managing the Dancing Bear strategy and from Monitor Fund Advisors to focus on other purs......................

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