Alternative funds face new challenges
With investors’ demands for more customised products growing, alternative asset managers will need either to embrace industry disruptions or risk losing market share, according to EY’s 2018 Global Alternative Fund Survey.
Money Management used FE Analytics to determine what happened to the top ten best performing alternative funds, based on their three-year annualised performance period, and which funds showed the highest consistency as far as returns were concerned.
According to data from FE Analytics, Tribeca Global Natural Resources fund was the top-performer, returning 46.31 per cent for the three years to last month’s end.
Although, the fund managed to retain its top quartile position as far as its one-year performance was concerned, it saw a drop in returns to 4.32 per cent for that period.
This was in line with a broader trend which, according to the 12th annual survey (formerly the EY Global Hedge Fund Survey), saw alternative asset managers grappling with a “whirlwind of changes” which included the challenges ranging from technological innovation to products and competition from new players.
Similarly, two Ausbil funds (Ausbil 130/30 Focus Wholesale and Ausbil 130/30 Focus Institutional), which were ranked as the second and third best performers returning 10.35 per cent and 10.32 per cent, respectively, for three years to last month’s end, saw a drop to the third quartile with returns of -2.83 per cent and -2.65 per cent, based on their one-year performance to the last month’s end.
Pendal’s Australian Long/Short, which invests close to 60 per cent in basic metals sector and financials, similarly saw a drop from the top-quartile to the third.
The fund generated top-quartile returns of 6.75 per cent for the three years to last month’s end however its’ one-year returns of -2.71 per moved the fund down to the third quartile.
On the other hand, Select Listed Investment fund, which was first launched in 2005 and returned 7.13 per cent for three years to last month’s end, proved to have the highest consistency as the fund produced top-quartile returns over the last 10, five and three year periods, respectively.
Also, this was the only fund out of ten which managed to deliver top-quartile returns for the past six, three and one- month periods, when it returned 1.41 per cent, 0.46 per cent and 1.34 per cent.
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