Van Eyk Research has recently launched an upgraded version of its longstanding ‘investment outlook’ (IOR) report to inform advisers on a monthly basis about the outlook for tactical and strategic asset allocation.
The report provides a framework for identifying trends driving investment markets and factors risks influencing fund manager returns. It will also include more asset classes.
The report will help van Eyk to evaluate more fund managers in terms of the way their portfolio is invested, with the objective of trying to find investors who are above average, said head of investment research Nigel Douglas, who will author the monthly report along with Dr Nigel Wilkin-Smith, van Eyk’s head of strategic research.
“We aim to identify those managers [who] are likely to outperform in a difficult market environment, those who are taking appropriate risk, and those who offer a good risk return proposition based on fundamentals.
“In the execution of their own strategies some managers have failed to adjust adequately to the environment, which is now a very big test for a range of fund strategies.”
The motivations for the report upgrade are that advisers are “currently having to take many more decisions in a more complicated investment environment, even though the fundamentals of investing are still the same”, he said.
Its launch will complement an enhanced monitoring regime at van Eyk based on “continuous monitoring” of fund managers, which was introduced late last year.
This new regime is also aimed at identifying investment anomalies in the execution of investment strategies by fund managers, such as an increase in risk or the unusual performance of a fund.
