The Platinum International Fund, one of Australia’s most highly regarded international equities strategies, has outperformed its benchmark over the past year.
And given Australian self-managed super fund (SMSF) portfolios’ widely acknowledged under-allocation to international equities, the outperformance warrants closer examination.
As the chart below illustrates, the fund boasted a total return of nearly 21 per cent over the year compared to its benchmark MSCI All Country World Index’s gain of just over 13 per cent.
Comparing the largest underlying holdings of the strategy to its benchmark’s major constituents can go some way to explaining the outperformance.
As 31 March, 2018, the only large holding the Platinum strategy shared in common with its benchmark index was Google parent company Alphabet, with a 2.6 per cent weighting.
When comparing the top 10 holdings, it’s clear Platinum has made decent sized bets on Asian equities, with Samsung Electronics the number one holding with a 3 per cent weighting, followed closely by Pin An Insurance of China with 2.8 per cent of the portfolio.
Both stocks have gained 15.5 per cent and 13.4 per cent respectively over the past year.
The strategy carries a four-crown FE Crown Fund Rating and is available as a quoted managed fund on the Australian Securities Exchange under the ticker PIXX.
It pays distributions annually and its management costs are 1.10 per cent per annum of net asset value, plus 15 per cent of outperformance over the benchmark.
