Watching the 2024 Olympic Games from the dry comfort of my living room has made the recent wet winter weather in Cape Town much more bearable! I have enjoyed discovering competitive rivalries that I have been completely unaware of in sports that I hardly ever follow, and observing the sometimes surprising and excessive patriotic zeal that seems to grip both athletes and spectators.
It probably happens to me at every Olympic Games (which I then forget as our TV screens return to showing the more traditional team sports like rugby, soccer, formula one and cricket),but I have renewed my profound respect and admiration for the dedication and commitment required by every participant at these Games, in sports as diverse as badminton, weightlifting, free climbing and kayaking.
However, one of my key observations came tome while watching the men’s decathlon event on the athletics track. Most events are defined by an exceptional outlying strength, ability or skill (examples might invite descriptions like ‘fastest woman on the planet’, ‘perfect score’, ‘highest jumper in the world’,etc). In slight contrast, the men’s decathlon/women’s heptathlon winner seems to be defined by a lack of weakness – a holistic athlete, one who is almost certainly a highly competitive athlete in every discipline, but who might not be a gold medallist in any single one, if that’s all they focused on. Instead, what defines them as exceptional athletes is their all-roundedness and lack of weakness in any one of the events.
I drew on this reflection when doing a recent presentation for our multi-asset portfolios, of which we run a high-equity, medium-equity and low-equity mandate.
What a multi-asset fund is really good at, and what Laurium Capital as portfolio managers are employed to do on our investors’ behalf, is protecting investors against market weaknesses, to find a well-balanced and diversified blend of assets that will protect investor capital during periods of stress over shorter time periods of up to a year, and yet also have healthy enough returns that protect investors’ savings against inflation over longer time periods. These funds invest right across the asset spectrum, in shares, bonds, property and cash within SA and abroad.
While the funds have a specific mandate to perform ahead of local category Collective InvestmentScheme peers, the funds are managed by Laurium Capital with a focus on downside protection. This is achieved by weighing up expected return versus the risk of loss in each investment decision and holding a diverse portfolio of assets that mitigate against ‘known unknowns’ in the market. It is the all-round strength of all parts of the investment team and the portfolio that contributes to exceptional and peer-beating long-term performance.
The recent volatile swings in markets early in August are a great illustration of the multi-asset portfolios inaction. A rapid change in the outlook for US growth led investors across the globe to alter their view on the pace and quantum of interest rate cuts likely to be made in the US. While falling interest rates are not necessarily abad thing for asset prices in the medium term, the shift in view prompted currency volatility in Japan.
The upshot was a rapid and sizeable fall in share prices in almost every stock market. Conversely, the forecast reduction in interest rates boosted the value of bonds, whose prices rise when yields/interest rates decline. This rally in bonds largely offset the decline in the share portfolio. In addition, holding a basket of foreign assets helps to cushion local SA investors further when measured in rand.
Many retirement funds are managed by picking different specialists for each asset class and then blending these together into a single fund. While intuitively appealing, there is an alternative. Using a single, multi-asset fund manager with skills in every asset class, such as Laurium Capital, gives the manager the mandate to analyse and sum up the evolving outlook, and reallocate capital within and between assets very rapidly(when and where appropriate).
Having the all-round capability ina single manager, and a well balanced portfolio, has helped to mitigate risk during volatile shorter time periods, while over the long term, the Laurium Capital investment team strives to produce exceptional, peer-beating performance. Laurium Capital manages four multi-asset funds, namely the Laurium Flexible Prescient Fund, the Laurium Stable Prescient Fund, the Amplify SCI BalancedFund and the PPS Stable Growth Fund.
For more information, please visit www.lauriumcapital.com
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