Hopes for year in the black

The Australian share market’s modest 0.4 per cent posting for May is keeping alive industry hopes of an overall positive result for the 2002-03 financial year - with a 3 per cent return required in June to end the year in the black.

However despite the market’s -2.9 per cent performance to date, 20 per cent of managers in the latestInTechperformance survey have already posted positive performance for the financial year to date.

“If we look back to February 2003 all managers were negative for full year to date performance… however, if markets continue to provide positive returns then there may well be a number of managers with positive absolute returns for the financial year to 30 June 2003,” says InTech senior consultant Corrin Collocott.

Top performers for the financial year to date areLazard(2.5 per cent),Investors Mutual(2.5 per cent) andTyndallValue (1.9 per cent).

The modest positive return posted by the domestic share market resulted in a third consecutive month of positive returns, InTech notes.

However, the median Australian shares manager performed marginally better and out-performed the index with a 0.7 per cent return.

InTech says that value and growth styles did not impact the relative performance of fund managers, with a mixture of both styles heading and footing the survey results.

Managers with a small cap bias fared better than others, with the S&P/ASXSmall Ordinaries Index outperforming the S&P/ASX 200 Accumulation Index by 2.4 per cent.

InTech says the three month return for the international share market in local currency terms provided 12.4 per cent, the largest three month return since December 1999.

However it adds that the strong Australian dollar would have reduced this to 6.8 per cent for unhedged Australian investors.