Zenith has completed its 2012 Global Long/Short Equities Review.
From an initial universe of 34 Domestic Long/Short Funds Zenith has rated 3 funds “Highly Recommended”, 14 funds “Recommended” and 1 fund “Approved”. The 18 funds that were rated are shown below with their respective ratings and segregated into Global Funds, Regional Funds and Sector Funds.
Global Funds
Platinum International Brands Fund – Highly Recommended
Platinum International Fund – Highly Recommended
Five Oceans Wholesale World Fund – Recommended
K2 Select International Absolute Return Fund – Recommended
PM Capital Absolute Performance Fund – Approved
Regional Funds
Platinum Asia Fund – Highly Recommended
K2 Asian Absolute Return Fund – Recommended
KIS Asia Long Short Fund – Recommended
Platinum European Fund – Recommended
Platinum Japan Fund – Recommended
Premium Asia Fund – Recommended
Premium China Fund – Recommended
8IP Asia Pacific Partners Fund – Recommended
Sector Funds
Platinum International Technology Fund – Recommended
Platinum International Health Care Fund – Recommended
Pengana Asia Special Events Fund – Recommended
Pengana Global Resources Fund – Recommended
Premium SAM Asia Property Fund – Recommended
Platinum’s Ratings – Zenith Maintains Strong View
Given the prevalent use of Platinum by our clients and the questions that have come up around the recent underperformance of some of Platinum’s funds, we thought it would be useful to provide a brief comment on why we have re-affirmed our strong ratings on Platinum’s suite of products post this year’s due diligence reviews.
While some of the Platinum funds have had softer performance numbers more recently, we are inclined to continue to back the manager. We note that Platinum takes very contrarian views on many stocks and themes in the market and that this style of management does not work consistently across the market cycle.
In more recent times the manager has been positioned in areas that have been overlooked and neglected by the market based on risk off trades. Zenith feels that investors that hold the course with Platinum are likely to be rewarded. Historically, given Platinum’s high conviction style, when performance has turned it tends to turn quite quickly.
Overall, Zenith believes that the level of quality across the Platinum team remains excellent and from the meetings with all of the portfolio managers across the firm we believe that they remain across all the issues in their portfolios.
