Money Management looked at the funds in the Australian small/mid-cap equity sector to see why the sector is the second-best performer across one, three and five-year time frames.
The Australian small/mid-cap sector has placed in the top quartile for performance across one, three and five-year time frames, joining only the ACS Equity – North America sector for those periods.
The average returns for the sector across one year were 21.67 per cent, 14.28 per cent across three years, and 13.74 across five years.
Just under half the funds in the sector were above-average performers, with 38 funds beating the sector average and placing in the first and second quartiles.
Macquarie’s Small Companies fund was a top-performing fund across one, three and five-year periods, and is looking to continue to be a strong performer by maintaining a top quartile position over the last three and six months.
The fund returned 30.88 per cent over three years and 40.73 per cent over the year to date.
Joining Macquarie is the SGH Emerging Companies Fund, also a top performer, returning 24.22 per cent over three years and 27.04 per cent over the year to date.
Perpetual’s Pure Microcap fund sat in the top quartile over three years but dropped to the bottom quartile in the shorter one-year and six-month periods.
The Smallco Investment Fund had a stellar track-record, producing top-quartile returns over one, three, five and ten years, and looked to keep it up with top-quartile returns for the last one, three and six months.
The chart below shows the performance of the funds relative to the sector.
