Emerging manager outperforms market by 35 per cent

Emerging Manager

Winner

The Montgomery Fund – Montgomery Investment Management 

Finalists

Triple 3 Volatility Advantage Fund – Triple 3 Partners 
Smarter Money Active Cash Fund – Smarter Money Investments Pty Ltd

A "very different, yet rational and logical approach" saw The Montgomery Fund outperform the market by 35 per cent since 2012 and shine brightly as an emerging manager.  

The firm said its success came from its approach to the purchase of shares, "as the opportunity to buy outstanding businesses".  

Chief investment officer (CIO), Roger Montgomery said, their philology was "purchasing the whole business, rather than just trading on the stock market".  

Another reason for their triumph was that they built their business "focused on the end investors... who don't want to lose money... so we retain the ability to hold significant amounts of cash," Montgomery said.  

"Investors are not paying us to be in cash, they're paying us to know when to be out of stocks and when to be in the stock market", Montgomery said.  

Despite having a large proportion in cash (18-20 per cent), the fund "significantly outperformed" the market, he added.  

Since its inception in 2012 the fund generated an absolute return of 73 per cent, while the the ASX 300 generated 37 per cent.  

"But that's not the impressive statistic. We captured almost all of the markets upside (94 per cent of it), and about half of the downside (47 per cent)," he said.  

Meanwhile, the Triple 3 Volatile Advantage Fund said their success was underpinned "by trading volatility as an asset class".  

The firm's chief executive, Simon Ho, said their second point of difference was that they used options to "exclusively" create portfolios as they "deliver the greatest certainty around performance outcomes". 

For Smarter Money Active Cash fund, their success came from being "Australia's leading short-term fixed-interest fund for four years, on the basis of growth and net raw returns".  

The Smarter Money Investments fund's co-chief investment officer, Darren Harvey said: "This has been driven by our highly active asset-selection style and unique quantitative asset pricing".