The First State Fund is possibly best described as a boring fund. This is not a negative, and could be a good reason to invest. They believe strongly that their aim is to preserve and grow client’s capital with a 3 to 5 year time horizon.
First State has dominated the Asia Pacific Investment Market alongside Aberdeen for many years. However, the fund now stands at over £5 billion and the managers have indicated recently that they may limit future money into the fund to protect existing investors.
Currently the fund is still open, and with recent poor performance from the region over the last two years it is likely that the managers have not closed the fund simply because investors have naturally moved money away.
The fund has a good performance track record and is well respected in the market. Since 2009 it has outperformed the index in all but one year. There are a number of reasons why investors would opt for this fund over other Asian Funds and in our latest update with the investment team we will highlight some of these.