Welcome back - but not to a great start to the New Year!
Not a great start to the New Year is probably an understatement in anyone's language. Whether it is equity prices across the globe, commodity prices, a refugee crisis in Europe threatening widespread economic, security and social problems, or the Chinese authorities hamfisted approach to stablising markets, the news has been dismal to say the least - unless you're a motorist filling the car at a nearby petrol station, or taking advantage of lower airline prices.
At the current time the ASX200 is down around 5.5% since the start of the year, for a fall of around 12.5% over the past 12 months, having at one stage during the month looked even worse. Ugly to say the least, and while not wishing to forcast more gloom and doom, it does seem that volatility will remain entrenched across the globe for some time to come. To what extent the US rate rise late last year has had anything to do with equity market weakness in difficult to fathom given it has been clouded, or at least overshadowed by the exteme volatility and weakness in Chinese markets.
So if we can't (or don't want to) forcast the future beyond the obvious, let's look back at the previous year, as we usually do at this time: Over the 12 months to December 2015 the ASX200 absolute return struggled to gain 2.56%, while excluding dividends the ASX200 recorded a loss of -2.13%. Probably the only reason it performed as well as it did was the unquenchable thirst for yield that those two statistics indicate.
Over the other side of the Pacific the S&P500 fell -1.58% or on an accumulation basis it rose a paltry 1.38%.
Not unsurpisingly the Equity based hedge and absolute return fund sector out-performed underlying markets significantly - with the average performance of all funds in AFM's database (unweighted for size) up 12.49%. Non equity funds, including credit, fixed income, commodites and FX for example, fared less well, but still managed a return of just over 4% for the year. Almost 80% of all funds - equity and non equity - outperformed the ASX200, and only 12% finished the year in negative territory.
As usual the spread of performances was dramatic, and after stripping out the top and bottom 1% of funds, ranged from -10% to +55%. From a strategy perspective equity based funds such as Market Neutral (+14.82%), Active Long Only (+14.2%), Long/Short (+13.22%), and 130/30 (+10.34%) all performed well, while at the other end of the scale, only two strategies, Commodities/CTA and Managed Futures, averaged negative returns.
Some highlights are shown below, or for full details follow the link to www.fundmonitors.com
Performance updates and reviews received this over the past couple of weeks included the following PERFORMANCE UPDATES:
Bennelong Long Short Equity Fund rose 6.22% in December, to bring latest 12-month return to 37.14%.
For the month of December, the Meme Australian Share Fund gained 4.40% compared to the ASX200 Accumulation Index's return of 2.73%, an outperformance of 1.67%.
Optimal Australia Absolute Trust recorded net return of -0.1% to bring the year 2015's return to +8.05%.
The Paragon Fund returned 0.3% for the month of December, to take latest 12 month return to 16.44%.
Bennelong Kardinia Absolute Return Fund rose 1.74% in December, to bring annualised performance since inception 12.74% p.a.
Totus Alpha Fund rose 4.5% net of fees in December taking the latest 12 month return to 53.40%.
NWQ Fiduciary Fund returned +2.22% for the month of December, to bring latest 12 month return to 17.18%.
Pengana Absolute Return Asia Pacific Fund rose 0.72% for the month, outperforming the HFR Event Driven Index which closed down -0.9%, by 1.62%.
Signature Quantitative Fund rose 2.50% for the month of December, to bring annualised performance since inception to 10.40% p.a.
Morphic Global Opportunities Fund returned -2.48% in December to bring latest 12 month return to 9.08%.
APN Asian REIT Fund returned -0.48% in December. Since inception, the Fund has an annualised return of 15.97% p.a.
Freehold Absolute Return Fund delivered a positive 1.95% for the month of December.
Jamieson Coote Bonds Active Fund rose 0.25% in December.
APN AREIT Fund rose 4.67% in December to bring annualised return since inception to 17.73% p.a.
Laminar Credit Opportunities Fund returned +0.66% for the month of December.
Qato Capital Market Neutral Long/Short Fund rose 2.70%, compared to the S&P/ASX 100 Price Index, which returned 2.40%.
Supervised High Yield Fund produced a return of +0.37% for the month of December, to bring annualised performance since inception to 9.68% p.a.
Insync Global Titans Fund returned -1.90% for the month of December, to take the latest 24 months to 18.72%.
KIS Asia Long Short Fund rose 2.90% for December, outperforming the AFM Asia Pacific ex-Japan Index by 4.32%
FUND REVIEWS released this week: Meme Australian Share Fund; Bennelong Long Short Equity Fund; Optimal Australia Absolute Trust; Bennelong Kardinia Absolute Return Fund; Totus Alpha Fund; Morphic Global Opportunities Fund; Pengana Absolute Return Asia Pacific Fund; APN Asian REIT Fund
And on that happy note it's good to be back, and as always I trust you have a safe and enjoyable week-end.
Regards,
Chris
CEO, AUSTRALIAN FUND MONITORS
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