Australia Active Insights

Overview

"Traditional" active fundamental equity portfolios which depend on style or factor mean reversion to drive alpha are often associated with high tracking error and longer time horizons. We recognise that these types of portfolios are increasingly becoming less aligned with the risk budget of asset owners facing strict performance benchmarks such as the Your Future, Your Super (YFYS) performance test. However, we still believe that true alpha is best derived from fundamental analyst insights.

The Martin Currie Australia (MCA) Active Insights strategy invests in a diversified portfolio of ASX-listed equities. We aim to provide investors with a ‘goldilocks’ efficient portfolio with consistently higher returns than the benchmark with a lower tracking error by focussing on our investment team’s ‘pure’ fundamental insights and minimising unnecessary style factor and sector risks relative to the S&P/ASX 200.

With the influence of style factor cyclicality and sector biases substantially reduced, and with deep fundamental insight and disciplined risk control, we believe the MCA Active Insights strategy offers benefits distinct from active fundamental portfolios, systematic smart beta or passive strategies.

Key Pillars of the Strategy

Proprietary multi-lensed research by an experienced team

The MCA team has over 40 years of experience investing in Australian equities and listed Real Assets using a disciplined and repeatable multi-lensed investment approach.

Combining fundamental research with risk control

Our stock ideas are grounded in our fundamental, bottom-up Valuation research. Risk is managed by incorporating our Quality, Direction Short-Term and Direction Long-Term lenses.

Fully integrated fundamental Active Ownership approach

Responsibility for Active Ownership lies directly with the research analysts and portfolio managers responsible for making investment decisions.

Unique portfolio stabilisers that minimise unnecessary style factor and sector risks

Our proprietary Mispricing process combines our fundamental research expertise with proprietary alpha & risk signals to identify attractive stocks that help to neutralises the influence of style or sector bias

We believe that our long-term track record in alpha generation through varied market cycles demonstrates our ability to deliver investors with a more persistent and efficient alpha stream at a lower cost, in a way that is difficult for passive, systematic or quantitative strategies to emulate.