04 Oct 2024
Every month we study the universe of funds in the investment marketplace to assess whether they meet our exacting standards and should be given the RSMR seal of approval.
Here are the new rated funds from our September review:
Waverton European Capital Growth fund is built from the bottom-up, with the management team believing they can deliver long term outperformance to clients by analysing the capital cycle of industries and individual businesses, exploiting any opportunities they feel that the market has overlooked. The fund represents a compelling and differentiated offering in the European equities space, providing investors access to an established and consistent process run by an experienced management team with a strong long-term track record for adding value consistently across a market cycle.
It can be used as a core holding for investors looking for exposure to European equities, as well as a complement to more style driven funds within a diversified portfolio.
The M&G Asian fund is managed with a view to being style agnostic and returns being driven by stock specifics with no thematic overlay. There is a focus on investing in stocks whose valuations offer a margin of safety and a concentration on capital preservation which can give the fund more of a value orientation, but key aspects of the investment process are distinct from those of a typical value manager. The fund is usually invested in 60 to 80 stocks.
The strong fund management team have successfully worked together (prior to joining M&G) for a long time and have diverse backgrounds, responsibilities and geographic locations. They are used to working as a team based in multiple locations and use technology to communicate regularly and effectively.
The team operate with an absolute return mindset, aiming to avoid unintended correlations by using bottom-up stock selection to generate uncorrelated alpha. The strength of the team enables them to shape the portfolio from a ‘curated universe of stocks’ which has been built up over the longer term, investing in companies and industries that they understand comprehensively.
The fund is not designed to ‘shoot the lights out’ in performance terms but the fund has performed competitively against peers over multiple time periods.
The fund has a resilient investment process which is designed with an eye on capital protection and is consistently applied. The aim is to generate alpha from a concentrated portfolio of stocks selected from a universe of ‘curated stocks’ that the team have observed every aspect of throughout their careers.
This is a quality core holding for any investor requiring exposure to Asian Pacific (ex-Japanese) equities.
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This information is for UK Professional Advisers only and should not be given to retail clients.
The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested.