Fund Manager of the Year 2014: Alternative Investments
Winner
AQR Managed Futures Fund.
Finalists
GaveKal’s Asian Opportunities Fund
Partners Group Global Value Fund
Paying equal attention to the four major asset classes has been a winning strategy for the AQR Managed Futures Fund.
Its trend-following investment style, which the firm credits for its history of stable returns to, won it title of Money Management and Lonsec’s Alternative Investments Fund Manager of the Year.
“What’s different about our fund is that we allocate risk pretty evenly across the four sectors (equities, fixed income, cash/cash alternatives, commodities), whereas a lot of others tend to be more focused and more concentrated on certain sectors, like fixed income,” Yao Hua Ooi, principal and co-fund manager for AQR’s Managed Futures strategy, said.
Under the strategy Ooi and co-fund manager Brian Hurst adopt both a long-term and short-term focus to help deliver balanced returns both when the market is performing and when it is not.
“Most investors’ portfolios are invested heavily in the markets, stock markets and bond markets around the world,” Hurst said. “People are looking for alternatives that hopefully pay off when markets underperform.
“We really launched this fund to be used as a tool for our investors to hold in their portfolios to help steady the overall portfolio’s performance through tough times.”
Fellow finalists in the category – GaveKal’s Asian Opportunities Fund and Partners Group Global Value Fund – attributed similar alternative strategies to their success in 2013.
Certitude’s managing director Craig Mowell, who offers the GaveKal fund in Australia, said its grassroots exposure to Asian markets was behind its success.
“You want to be able to get face-to-face with all of these companies ¨ You really want that deep dirty understanding and with that, you start to find real opportunities in the Asian markets from a bottom-up perspective,” he said.
Meanwhile, Partners Group managing director, Martin Scott, credited his fund’s unique global equities exposure to its stellar year.
“The Fund gives investors access to global privately-owned businesses, many of which are household names, that are normally not accessible as they are not traded on public equity markets.”
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