This should be seen as a long term ‘hold’ fund and performance indicates that taking this approach has delivered significant outperformance for investors.
2013 was a fantastic time for European Equities, however much of that was momentum driven with poor peripheral stocks driving the returns. This meant that funds tracking the index tended to outperform active managers. The optimism of 2013 drove many investors back into European markets on the assumption that it would continue into 2014. So far in 2014 the market has been flat.
With so many funds in the sector it is very hard for an investor to choose. One fund which we have followed is the SLI European Equity Income Fund. Since launch it has significantly outperformed the benchmark but over the last 20 months it has only tracked the index.
We like the approach of the manager which attracted us to the fund, but our concern is around recent performance and whether the outperformance will start to narrow. It is a large fund with over £2 billion under management but with just 60 holdings. No one stock dominates the fund.
This is the second time we have met the manager and in this update we wanted to explore some of the management style and some of the positioning so potential investors can consider whether this is a fund they should include in their portfolios.