As many Asian countries mark the Lunar New Year, Money Management explores which Asia Pacific ex Japan funds have been the most consistent performers over the last five years.
The most-common benchmark used by the 28 funds in this sector was the MSCI AC Asia Pacific ex Japan sector. Looking at latest data, this index returned 7.5% in 2016, 27.1% in 2017, lost 4% in 2018, returned 19.6% in 2019 and 11.8% in 2020 on an annualised basis.
According to FE Analytics, there were 15 funds in the Asia Pacific ex Japan sector within the Australian Core Strategies universe which had a five-year track record, having been launched before January 2016.
These were SGH Tiger, Pendal Asian Share, Nikko AM TAAM New Asia, Platinum Asia, Premium Asia, BlackRock iShares Asia 50 ETF NAV, Aberdeen Standard Asian Opportunities, Fidelity Asia, UBS IQ MSCI Asia APEX 50 Ethical ETF, Schroder Asia Pacific Wholesale, CFS FirstChoice Wholesale Asian Share, Macquarie Asia New Stars No 1, PM Capital Asian Companies, Maple-Brown Abbott Asian Investment Trust and Maple-Brown Asia Pacific Trust.
The most consistent performer was Fidelity Asia which was the only fund that managed to outperform the MSCI benchmark over each of the five years.
In 2016, it returned 8.8%, in 2017 it returned 31.3%, in 2018 it lost 0.03% but this was less than the benchmark, in 2019 it returned 27.8% and in 2020 it returned 15.7%.
Since 1 January, 2016, the Fidelity Asia fund had returned 111% versus returns of 75% by the MSCI AC Asia Pacific ex Japan index.
There were three funds which had outperformed over four of the five years; SGH Tiger, BlackRock iShares Asia 50 ETF and UBS IQ MSCI Asia APEX 50 Ethical ETF. SGH had outperformed in every year but 2017 while the other two funds had outperformed in every year except for 2018.
Over five years, the SGH Tiger fund had returned 173.4%, making it the best performing of the 15 funds over the period, while BlackRock returned 110.6% and the UBS fund returned 99.8%.
2018 was an anomaly for the sector as Chinese growth slowed to a 28-year low and the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite index lost 20% during the year. While there were three funds which outperformed the index, which lost 4.5%, none reported positive returns.
As well as the Fidelity fund, the three outperforming funds were the Aberdeen Standard Asian Opportunities fund, SGH Tiger and Maple-Brown Abbott Asian Investment Trust which lost 1.6%, 2.5% and 3.5% respectively versus benchmark losses of 4%.
