NEWS
KIS Asia Long Short Fund
9 Mar 2015 - Australian Fund Monitors
KIS Asia Long Short Fund returned -0.35% in January bringing the Fund's annual return since inception to 14.83%.
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9 Mar 2015 - KIS Asia Long Short Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | Whilst the Fund's primary strategy is focused on long/short equities, the ability to retain discretionary powers to allocate across a number of other investment strategies is reserved. These strategies may include, but not be limited to: convertible bond investments, portfolio hedging, equity related arbitrage, special situations (e.g. merger arbitrage, rights offerings, participation in international public offerings and placements, etc.). The Fund's geographic focus is Asia excluding Japan, but including Australia). The Fund may invest outside of this region to the extent that: 1. The investment decision is driven from the Asian region or; 2. The exposure is intended to mitigate risk or enhance return from factors external to the Asian region. |
| Manager Comments | The portfolio gained 17bp due to the convertible bonds strategy on Elders Ltd & PaperlinX Limited. The portfolio's long/short, portfolio hedge and currency class FX hedge strategies lost a total of 85bp in January. The Fund suffered on short positions on Australian banks (NAB.AX, CBA.AX, ANZ.AX) and long position in Comba Telecom. However, the loss in this strategy was minimized by having long positions in two small cap holdings. The portfolio hedge strategy lost 47bp as the Fund did not expect the ECB to be such a strong and cohesive organization to be able to propose QE measures that markets would react positively to. To hedge the fund, and to profit from our expectation of disappointment from the market to the announcement we had purchased index put options. Investments are received in US$ and spot exchanged to A$. The impact of interest rate differentials reduced the performance of the US$ series by 27bp. |
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Insync Global Titans Fund
6 Mar 2015 - Australian Fund Monitors
Insync Global Titans Fund returned 1.30% in January bringing the Fund's prior 12 month performance to 12.81%.
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6 Mar 2015 - Insync Global Titans Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | Insync employs four simple screens to narrow the universe of over 40,000 listed companies globally to a focus group of high quality companies that it believes have the potential to consistently grow their profits and dividends. These screens are size of the company, balance sheet performance, valuation and dividend quality. Companies that pass this due diligence process are then valued using dividend discount models, free cash flow yield and proprietary implied growth and expected return models. The end result is a high conviction portfolio of typically 15-30 stocks. The principal investments will be in shares of companies listed on international stock exchanges (including the US, Europe and Asia). The Fund may also hold cash, derivatives (for example futures, options and swaps), currency contracts, American Depository Receipts and Global Depository Receipts. The Fund may also invest in various types of international pooled investment vehicles. At times, Insync may consider holding higher levels of cash if valuations are full and it is difficult to find attractive investment opportunities. When Insync believes markets to be overvalued, it may hold part of its resources in cash, or use derivatives as a way of reducing its equity exposure. Insync may use options, futures and other derivatives to reduce risk or gain exposure to underlying physical investments. The Fund may purchase put options on market indices or specific stocks to hedge against losses caused by declines in the prices of stocks in its portfolio. |
| Manager Comments | More than half of the Fund's geographic composition was in North America at 59.50%. The key industry compositions consisted of Health Care at 27.50%, Consumer Discretionary at 19.70% and Consumer Staples at 18.40%. The Fund's performance was driven by positive contributions from holdings in Nestle, Reckitt Benckiser, Experian and Sanofi as well as the weaker Australian dollar. The main negative contributors were Time Warner Cable, Microsoft and Discover Financial Services. The Fund continues to have no foreign currency hedging in place as Insync consider the main risks to the Australian dollar to be on the downside. |
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Supervised High Yield Fund
5 Mar 2015 - Australian Fund Monitors
Supervised High Yield Fund returned 0.23% in January and 10.39% annual return since inception (RBA Cash Rate 3.52%) with a volatility of 2.13%.
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5 Mar 2015 - Supervised High Yield Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | The fund may also invest in interest rate swaps, options over authorized investments and exchange traded futures contracts. All these will be either listed or traded in a market where they can be independently valued. Fundamental to the investment procedure is the tenet that no debt security will qualify for investment unless it can repay 100% of its principal and interest in a worst case economic scenario. |
| Manager Comments | More than half of the portfolio's composition was in Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) at 53.74%. The rest of the portfolio was in Corporate Loan Services (26.27%), Cash (15.80%) and Hedges (4.18%). The Sharpe ratio for the Fund was 3.11 with only 1 negative month since inception in 2009. |
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Fund Review: Bennelong Long Short Fund January 2015
4 Mar 2015 - Australian Fund Monitors
Fund review available for Bennelong Long Short Fund which has over twelve year track record and annualised returns of 17.37%.
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4 Mar 2015 - Fund Review: Bennelong Long Short Fund January 2015
By: Australian Fund Monitors
BENNELONG LONG SHORT EQUITY FUND
Attached is our most recently updated Fund Review on the Bennelong Long Short Equity Fund.
CPD Points are now available for all AFM Fund Reviews. Read the review and answer 5 questions to earn half a point toward your continuing professional development.
- The Fund is a research driven, market and sector neutral, "pairs" trading strategy investing primarily in large cap stocks from the ASX/S&P100 Index, with a twelve year track record and annualised returns of 17.37%.
- The consistent returns across the investment history indicates the Fund's ability to provide positive returns in volatile and negative markets and significantly outperform the broader market. The Fund's Sharpe Ratio and Sortino Ratio are 1.04 (Index 0.34) and 1.73 (Index 0.37) respectively.
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Fund performance in January was modest at 2.66%, with no major changes to the Fund's positioning. The standout contributor being long in Resmed and short in Ansell. Also helping performance was long Henderson?s / short AMP, while long Caltex / short Metcash again was a top contributor following last month?s respective profit upgrade / downgrade announcements.
For further details on the Fund, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Sean Webster
Research and Database Manager
Australian Fund Monitors
Signature Quantitative Fund
4 Mar 2015 - Australian Fund Monitors
In January, Signature Quantitative Fund returned -2.20% bringing the Fund's annual performance since inception to 17.64%.
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4 Mar 2015 - Signature Quantitative Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | SQF has been established to profit from anomalies surrounding event driven, behavioural & factor based structural market inefficiencies which generate significant profits and are uncorrelated & persistent over time. Specific strategies such as dividend arbitrage, index addition and deletion, tax year end, capital raisings, among other strategies are used by the Fund. The Fund's initial focus is on investing in Australian and New Zealand markets. |
| Manager Comments | The Fund's strong performance has been achieved with lower volatility, bringing the Fund's Sharpe Ratio and Sortino Ratio to 1.68 (Index 0.57) and 4.57 (Index 0.77) respectively. The underperformance in January was largely caused by the Dividend Strategy. SQF also suffered stock¬-specific events that weighed on performance short Macquarie Bank (81bps), long Woodside Petroleum (80bps) and short Henderson Group (78bps) were the largest contributors. The offsetting trades did not balance out these stock movements as expected. |
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Fund Review: Totus Alpha Fund January 2015
3 Mar 2015 - Australian Fund Monitors
January Fund Review with key statistics for Totus Alpha Fund now available. CPD Points also available.
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3 Mar 2015 - Fund Review: Totus Alpha Fund January 2015
By: Australian Fund Monitors
TOTUS ALPHA FUND
CPD Points are now available for all AFM Fund Reviews. Read the review and answer 5 questions to earn half a point toward your continuing professional development.
We would like to highlight the following aspects of the Fund;
- Totus Capital is a Sydney based long short fund manager established in 2012 by Ben McGarry which aims to place equal emphasis on performance and capital preservation. The Fund invests mainly in Australia, but also in other developed economies, with a primary exposure to equity markets.
- The Totus Alpha Fund?s investment strategy is to identify structural themes, and then seek to drive performance by investing in securities that have concentrated exposure to those themes. Single stock short positions are used to generate alpha, frequently in under researched parts of the market such as the small and mid-cap space. Index derivatives are used to hedge the portfolio?s market risk.
- McGarry qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PWC in 1999 and has 14 years market experience, commencing his career covering European building materials and construction sectors at Morgan Stanley in London. Previous experience included analytical roles at Ausbil, a Sydney based $10bn+ long-only manager, and sell side emerging companies experience at UBS. McGarry?s emerging company research with UBS included exposure to a range of sectors including energy, materials, industrials, tech, financials, retail and telecommunications.
- The Fund has delivered an annalised return of 26.95% since inception in March 2012 as compared to 14.11% for the ASX 200 Accumulation Index. The standard deviation has been higher than the Index at 13.21% as compared to 11.02% and the Sharpe ratio is 1.67.
Sean Webster
Research and Database Manager
Australian Fund Monitors
Laminar Credit Opportunities Fund
3 Mar 2015 - Australian Fund Monitors
In January, the Laminar Credit Opportunities Fund returned 0.74%, bringing its annual performance since inception to 19.75%.
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3 Mar 2015 - Laminar Credit Opportunities Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | The Fund may also invest in derivatives for hedging purposes. The portfolio of the Fund comprises primarily Investment Grade holding of 75% of the Fund's assets. Benchmark allocations are Australasia 50% to 100%, North America 0% to 50% and Europe 0% to 50%. Currency hedging may take place depending on benefits to the Fund. |
| Manager Comments | The Fund has little exposure to movements in interest rates because the majority of the assets within the Fund are floating rate notes (the interest rate duration of the Fund as at January 31st 2015 was 0.05 years). This helped the Fund avoid the sell-off experienced by fixed rate bonds during 2013, but the Reserve Bank of Australia's move to cut the cash rate on February 2nd lowered the one month BBSW rate, which is the benchmark rate for most of the assets in the portfolio. This will marginally reduce the Fund's returns in the near term. |
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Alpha Beta Asian Fund
2 Mar 2015 - Australian Fund Monitors
In January, the Alpha Beta Asian Fund returned -1.30%, bringing the Fund's return since inception to 20.90%.
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2 Mar 2015 - Alpha Beta Asian Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | The investment objective of the Fund is to produce positive annual returns without excessive risk. This is achieved through the use of a quantitative approach to invest both long and short in large cap companies listed on Asian stock exchanges. The Fund may also use index futures to manage risk. Stock prices and company fundamental data are decomposed into directional and mean reverting components. Each of Alpha Beta's models are based on either of these known behaviours with capital management built into each model. The benefit of a quantitative approach is that it is both repeatable and unemotional, and allows a different source of returns to be extracted from a very noisy market environment. |
| Manager Comments | The Fund's twelve month annualised volatility was 3.77% compared to the MSCI Asia Pacific Index 8.29%. At month-end the Fund had a gross exposure of 259% and a net exposure of 0% across 501 positions. |
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Allard Investment Fund
2 Mar 2015 - Australian Fund Monitors
Allard Investment Fund increased 5.5% during January 2015, bringing the Fund's past twelve month performance to 24.73%.
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2 Mar 2015 - Allard Investment Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Manager Comments | In terms of industry breakdown the Fund was most exposed to Financial Services at 19.3%, Conglomerates 11.0% and Telco's with 9.5%. The geographic breakdown was Hong Kong / China at 42.5%, Singapore 11.0% and Korea 9.2%. |
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Pengana Absolute Return Asia Pacific Fund
27 Feb 2015 - Australian Fund Monitors
Pengana Absolute Return Asia Pacific Fund returned 1.03% in January. The Fund has an annual return of 11.04% with annual volatility of 5.77% and a Sharpe ratio of 1.25.
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27 Feb 2015 - Pengana Absolute Return Asia Pacific Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | The Fund seeks to profit from trading securities which are primarily subject to corporate events or from trading-related securities which the Investment Manager believes are mispriced by the market. The Fund invests in securities that are listed on Asian stock markets and other markets where related securities may be listed and in securities which are listed on markets outside of Asia where more than 70% (by assets or earnings) of the underlying business originates from an Asian country. The Fund aims to generate consistently positive returns which have a low correlation to the Asian stock markets. The objective is to generate 10-20% pa with a standard deviation of 6-10% |
| Manager Comments | The Fund finished up 1.03% for the month, while Asian markets (FTSE Asia Pacific Index) rose 1.98%. Restructuring was the key word as several conglomerates reorganized themselves in the name of 'unlocking shareholder value.' The fund maintains a positive view that such restructuring will continue driving deal activity in Asia with unique trading opportunities. The Fund gross exposure was 242.5% for the month ended January as deal activity remained healthy, while net averaged 14%. |
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