Australian share fund managers strong in July


Australian share fund managers have posted generally strong results in July, with median share fund manager gaining 6.3 per cent, which was up 3.3 per cent year-on-year and ahead of the S&P/ASX300 index's 2.8 per cent, according to Morningstar.
The Australian Institutional Sector Survey, which helps compare Australian investment strategies, also revealed that the best-performing Australian share strategies over the year were Bennelong Concentrated (28.6 per cent), Allan Gray (21. 6 per cent) and Macquarie High Conviction (21.3 per cent).
As far as the global share strategies were concerned, they lagged Australian shares, with the median manager returning -3.6 per cent on an unhedged basis. The individual results ranged from 4.8 per cent down to -9.6 per cent, with the best-performing funds in this category being Antipodes, Orbis, and CFS.
At the same time, the median Australian property securities manager gained 24.3 per cent over the year, which was slightly above the index's 24.2 per cent.
According to a study, growth Australian share strategies did better than their value counterparts over the year and the S&P Australia BMI Growth Index returned 5.7 per cent against the S&P Australia BMI Value Index's 0.1 per cent.
Morningstar also stressed that consumer discretionary was the standout sector of the Australian sharemarket in July, returning 8.9 per cent, and was followed by consumer staples (8.5 per cent) and materials (7.8 per cent).
The poor-performing sectors this month included: energy (0.2 per cent), information technology (3.9 per cent) and telecommunications (4.2 per cent).
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