2013 Mercer survey confirms strong performance
- Australian Ethical Smaller Companies Trust
- ranked 1st over 6 months (out of 103 funds)
- ranked 1st over 7 years (out of 70 funds)
Sydney 10 December 2013: Australian Ethical CIO, David Macri, credits the funds’ outstanding performance to the manager’s consistent approach.
“This great performance over the longer term is testament to our consistent investment philosophy. We have applied a rigorous discipline to our stock selection and portfolio construction. The results prove that we have added value consistently over a full investment cycle, without taking undue risk.”
“While our short-term performance will tend to vary significantly with the market and indeed our peers, investors need to be mindful of the long term when investing in equities, in particular small caps given the heightened level of volatility. What we have shown is that our performance is consistently better than both the market and most of our peers.”
Our flagship fund, the Smaller Companies Trust, has achieved performance in the upper quartile in the retail “all cap” Australian Equity funds (Mercer) over all periods from 1-year to 11-years ending 30-Sep-13. Indeed it has achieved above median performance over all periods from 1-year to 19-years ending 30-Sep-13 (which is as far as the data goes), while over the 7-years it ranked 1st.
Key Australian Ethical findings in 2013 Mercer survey:
Australian Ethical Smaller companies Trust
- ranked 1st over 6 months (out of 103 funds)
- ranked 1st over 7 years (out of 70 funds)
Australian Ethical Larger Companies Trust
- ranked 3rd over 6 months (out of 103 funds)
- ranked 2nd over 12 months (out of 22 funds)
- ranked 4th over 2 years (out of 18 funds)
Australian Ethical International Equities Trust
- 1st over 3 months (out of 44 funds)
- 2nd over 6 months (out of 44 funds)
- 5th over 12 months (out of 44 funds)
Australian Ethical Cash Trust
- 2nd over 1 month (out of 35 funds)
- 6th over 1 year (out of 30 funds)
- 4th over 2 years (out of 23 funds)
Macri credits this to the ability for AEI to construct portfolios without regard to benchmark indices.
“The index itself is a flawed portfolio construction process. No active manager in their right mind would construct a portfolio using just market cap as the input. What we are able to do is go back to first principles and try to build an efficient portfolio with regard to risk and return, regardless of index weights. Yes we filter the universe based on ethics, but all managers filter their universes, be it by market cap or quantitative techniques. The result is a different portfolio, but by no means a less efficient one. The results prove this.
“The fact that our portfolios are so different actually should appeal to the broader market to consider adding this fund to their overall portfolio. What the research will show is that the benefits to the overall risk/return profile will improve substantially. This is the beauty of diversification!
“What’s the point in having too many managers who do the same thing?” said Mr Macri.”
contact
David Macri
Australian Ethical
chief information officer
02 6201 1993
0404 080 862
dmacri@australianethical.com.au
Chris Hocking
Chris Hocking Strategies
chris@chstrategies.com.au
02 8215 1506
0418 603 694