The Apostle Loomis Sayles Senior Loan Fund, which mainly invests in US senior loans, posted a return of +8.29% in January, a record for the Fund.

The manager attributed the excellent result to a rally in loan markets, which in previous months had been dragged down by forced selling from leveraged vehicles. This appeared to stop in January, allowing bargain hunters to buy up across all credit sectors. The manager also attributed the result to the generally high quality of loans that make up the Fund's portfolio, loans that will most likely survive challenging market conditions in 2009.

Looking ahead the manager expects prices to remain low, based on continuing poor economic news, although there will be an influx of new capital into the sector.

The Pengana Property Securities Fund was down -9.1% in January, after ending 2008 down -57.2%.

The Fund closely mirrored its benchmark, the S&P/ASX 300 Property Accumulation Index, which was down -9.6%. The Fund's portfolio remained positioned around larger, high quality business models with limited balance sheet risk, including CFS Retail, Westfield and Stockland. The Fund also began to take postions in regional property markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore, which present a lower risk profile. Cash holdings were increased to over 2% during the month, with the intention to further increase this position in future, due to the damaging affects of ongoing capital raisings on confidence.

With the Australian ban on covered short selling of financial stocks due to expire by Friday 6th March, speculation is mounting that it will be extended further with ongoing weakness and volatility giving the ban's proponents additional ammunition.

David Murray, former CEO of the Commonwealth Bank, and now heading up the government's Future Fund, has been reported as supporting an extension of the ban. At the same time the Dutch regulator, AFM, has extended their ban on the shorting of financials until June after ING and Aegon came under renewed pressure.

The hard facts are that financial stocks in Australia have not been shown to have been protected by the ban while it has been in place. This leads detractors of the ban to claim that the ban is a populist knee jerk reaction which is damaging price discovery, (otherwise known as letting the market dictate the value of a stock) liquidity and Australia's reputation as a serious financial centre.

At the same time they point out that as there are significant exclusions to the ban (market makers, derivatives etc) it is not being even handed. We expect the debate to increase over the next week, and, whatever the regulator's decision, to leave one side or the other decidedly unhappy.

Pioneer Global Investment (Australia) has declined to provide performance updates on their three funds since October 2008. The manager has advised that they are undergoing a restructure, but declined to provide any further information.

For the 10 months up until October last year, the Momentum Global Long/Short Strategy fund had lost 24.45%, the Momentum AllWeather fund was down 17.56% and the Restructuring Fund lost 20.7%.

From December brokers, superannuation firms and hedge funds will be required to report when they are borrowing stock, the RBA revealed yesterday.

Under the new disclosure rules brokers are required to report to the ASX when they are using stock borrowed under security lending agreements in trades. The quantities of stock borrowed daily will be published by the ASX. Investors who frequently lend stock will also be obliged to disclose their lending activities.

These rules were developed after an RBA-led investigation into the delayed settlement of trades across the market last January indicated stock lending was to blame. Along with the new short selling reporting rules revealed last year, the RBA is hoping these new regulations will increase transparency, thereby increasing confidence in the markets in volatile times.

The Aston BRIC Fund, Select Fund and Performance Fund all made gains in January, up +1.80%, +0.22% and +1.77% respectively (USD class).

The BRIC Fund, a regional multi-strategy fund which invests in countries which exhibit high levels of growth, bounced back after a disappointing 2008 (12 month return -12.72%). All three underlying managers contributed a positive return to the Fund.

Positive performance for the Select Fund came from global macro and volatility strategies, which have performed strongly over the past few months. This was partially offset by losses in credit and asset backed strategies, due to asset writedowns and a challenging corporate environment.

The Performance Fund also enjoyed gains from global macro and volatility, as well as event driven strategies. The manager identified the marked absence of leverage and reduced trading activity of proprietary trading desks as a great opportunity set for managers with a trading orientation. The underlying funds actually performed better than the Ashton fund result implies, as their returns were offset slightly by Ashton’s cash holdings. These holdings are expected to be deployed as new opportunities arise.

The AMP Total Return Fund was up +0.01% in January, bringing its 12 month return to -32.6%.

The Fund's underlying managers maintained an extremely low level of exposure during the month, and due to the Fund's active risk reduction in the last quarter of 2008 leverage was around 1.2x. Positive returns were gained in macro/commodity strategies, in particular natural gas, European emissions trading and gasoline markets. Negative returns came from leveraged loan markets due to a lack of liquidity, as well as distressed and event driven strategies. The manager continued to reduce exposure to certain strategies, including fixed income and distressed securities, believing that this, along with reduced amounts of leverage, will position the Fund well to take advantage of future opportunities.

The BlackRock Asset Allocation Alpha Fund (Class D) returned +1.30% in January, increasing the Fund's three month return to +9.74% and 12 month return to +36.87%.

The Fund, which utilises a tactical asset allocation strategy to exploit trends, mis-pricing opportunities and likely developments in global asset markets, achieived positive returns from almost all positions. These included commodity/currency (long gold vs Euro), bond/bond (primarily long term in Australian vs US 10 year) and equity/cash (short US equities) positions. The only negative influence on performance were bond/cash positions (mostly long in US 30 year bonds vs short on Australian cash rate futures).

MM&E Capital's Investment Trust No's 1 & 2 both gained +0.22% in January, bringing their respective 12 month returns to -5.5% and -6.4%.

Both funds gained from the successful completion of the private equity bid for MYOB, the narrowing of the spread on Arrow Energy's bid for Pure Energy and the exit from convertible positions in Commonwealth Bank and Macquarie Airports. These were partially offset by convertible losses on Rio Tinto and Wesfarmers. Looking ahead the funds will continue to increase their position in St George convertibles, soon to be redeemed due to the merger with Westpac, and build a position in the wide spread between Rio's UK and Australian listed shares.

The Prime Value Growth Fund lost -3.4% in January, while the Prime Value Imputation Fund lost -6.5%. Both funds are Australian equity long only funds, whose 12 month returns now stand at -27.2% and -37.8% respectively.

The Growth Fund suffered from an underweight position in the Healthcare sector, which negated positive contributions from an underweight position in Financials and the Fund's cash holding. Leighton Holdings (-34.9% following an earnings downgrade and asset write-down), NAB (-9.3%) and CSR (-19%) were the biggest detractors, while gains were made on Rio Tinto (+10.9%), CSL (+11.3%) and Woolworths (+3.9%).

The Imputation Fund lost ground due to an overweight position in Industrials and underweight positions in Healthcare and Materials, though the Fund's cash position mitigated losses to some extent. Gains were made on Caltex (+22% on an earnings upgrade), Codan and Incitec Pivot (+7.2%), whiles losses were made on Westpac (-7.8% following capital raising), NAB and CSR.