Managed Funds What is your favourite International fund?

The Australian markets have outperformed almost everything else (except perhaps China) over the last few years ... I wouldn't be too heavily weighted to overseas markets right now (Asia is a good choice ... but I'd not get overly exposed to the US).

I like the Platinum European fund - although I don't invest in it at the moment (I can get far better returns from Australian funds). I also like the Platinum International Brands fund, but recent performance hasn't been great. These two funds are on my shortlist - but I'd only invest in them if they started to consistently outperform the other funds I hold.

For other international funds, perhaps consider some sector specific funds such as Global Resources or Global Property Securities (CFS have good funds in both these sectors).

 

I'm heavily invested in the CFS W/S Small Companies - Core fund, and it's been a great performer. I'm not sure if there's a retail version ... haven't looked.

 

Welcome to the forum.

I disagree with your assertions.

I am not chasing past returns, if you spend the time to consider my strategy (which has been explained in several lengthy posts in recent months), you will see that I focus on what is performing NOW, not what performed well last year.

Also, it is pretty difficult to invest in a "global" market ... you typically invest in a country or region, or (in the case of Platinum International), in a variety of isolated shares across a range of countries.

You need to look at the market forces driving individual markets.

- China / Asia should continue to do well based on growth in China and India - but is bound to be volatile (especially China).
- Japan is slowly recovering from it's recent troubles, but is still very volatile.
- Europe is recovering from a recessionary period, but is still struggling with regional economic issues (country economics affecting regional economics due to new EU memberships).
- The US is continuing to look weak, with talk of a possible recession
- South America is still too under-developed to be meaningful as a region ... only Brazil is considered "emerging"

Australia has good (but not inflationary) growth, with extremely low unemployment, huge liquidity in the share market (mostly due to super), and a largely depressed real estate market (depressed in the largest markets like Sydney and Melbourne anyway). I see nervousness causing an increase in sharemarket volatility - but only back to historical norms (we have seen historically low volatility in recent years).

I don't know anything - these are all just opinions, and I have no qualifications to add any authority to what I say. Feel free to disagree.

I think the managed fund marketing spin of "invest in last year's worst performing sector" is a poorly considered strategy without any sound theoretical basis ... but if that works for you ... I wish you well.

 

Nobody can know that - I'm not suggesting otherwise.

However, a market or sector that is performing well because of good fundamentals should continue to perform well until the fundamentals change.

I think that is an over-generalisation, and I don't think it is true at all.

No - I'm investing in sectors which have a good basis for continuing to perform well. I regularly adjust my weightings across my portfolio based on market sentiment (which basically means reducing my exposure to areas which have gone out of favour for whatever reason).

I didn't say that.

I invest via managed funds and have international exposure in the resources and property securities sectors, plus additional exposure to Asia. I have a European fund on my shortlist too - but performance hasn't been up-to-par in recent months to justify a position in my portfolio.

Of course I'm trying to predict "what this year will do", but I'm not doing it based on some chart - I'm doing it based on fundamentals.

The fundamentals are still strong for Australia - P/E ratios are reasonable, share price rises have been backed by strong earnings growth, there is significant liquidity in the market, and we have a robust economy. I don't see any doom and gloom for the Australian market yet (although I doubt we will see the strength of the last few years continuing - and we will see more volatility I suspect).

 

CFS W/S Global Resources
CFS W/S Colliers International Property Securites
Platinum Asia

I like the Platinum International Brands fund (better than the Platinum International Fund)... it is on my short list and I monitor it regularly, but hasn't performed well enough to be part of my portfolio.

 

Returns have been more consistent with the International Brands fund.

Over the last 3 years, median quarterly growth in unit price has been 4.48% for Plat. Int. Brands versus only 1.22% for Plat. Int.

As a comparison, Plat. Asia has a median quarterly return of 5.32%.

The Plat. Int. Brands fund is currently ranked 7th on my shortlist (meaning I have 6 other funds performing consistently better over the short-medium term) ... a fund needs to be in the top 6 to be part of my portfolio.

 

My problem is that the concept is a complete generalisation and not meaningful in a practical sense.

There is no evidence that any particular fund which performed worse than any other particular fund will automatically perform better than that other fund in subsequent years. It only works when looking at the macro picture - averages across a larger number of funds.

It does not help you pick fund A over fund B today.

 

Short term ? Dunno ... crystal ball still broken - sorry.

Medium - long term ? I'd think it will still be pretty strong.

Attached are charts with MAVs for the financial year-to-date ... and for the last 2 years:

(graphs are NOT logarithmic and are based on $10K invested at inception with distributions reinvested, ignoring tax. Click on the charts to see larger version in the photo gallery)

Recently, the unit price briefly touched the 100 day MAV, but bounced back again immediately. Since then it has recovered, although has been flat for the last month or so.

Recent performance:
5 day: -1.04%
30 day: -0.40%
Fin year: 32.96%

What does this mean ? Not a lot in my opinion.

Yes, short term performance has been weak, but it's not trending down - just sideways, in my opinion.

Locally, Australian LPTs have been hit hard recently, there was talk for quite some time about them being over valued, and possibly overexposed to interest rate rises. Now that interest rate increase speculation has dropped significantly for the short-medium term, I expect local LPTs to recover a bit ... but they've lost a lot of ground, so it will be a while before I'll be buying back in. However, given that the Colliers fund doesn't really invest in Australia, the local market fluctuations don't have any real impact on the fund (beyond currency impacts perhaps).

I'm holding my Colliers fund for now. This is not a recommendation!

... if your strategy says that you should sell out to invest in PTM, then go for it.