van Eyk awarded ‘A’ ratings to the Apostle Global Small-Mid Cap Fund, the Blackrock Global Small Cap Fund and the Copper Rock Capital Global Small Cap Fund. 

Head of Ratings Matthew Olsen and lead analyst Varun Venkatraman said the funds in common had experienced research teams with a strong research process to identify quality listed companies at the smaller end of the market. 

The Apostle Fund, for example, has 18 investment professionals split between offices in London and Houston which gives the Fund an edge in on the ground coverage of US and European companies. Similarly, the Copper Rock Fund is led by three highly experienced portfolio managers including Denise Selden, one of the best known small cap analysts on Wall Street with almost 40 years of investment experience. 

“These managers combined rigorous bottom up research with a coherent, risk aware portfolio construction process,” Mr Venkatraman said. “We have conviction that these managers will add value for investors over a three to five year time frame.” 

van Eyk has also given high ratings to a number of exchange traded funds offered by BetaShares, which track major currencies, the gold price and the two largest industry sectors on the Australian sharemarket. 

Lead investment analyst Nimalan Govender said the currency ETFs benefited from being less complicated than some other types of ETFs and generally tracked the underlying currency closely as they were backed by direct foreign currency holdings in bank accounts. The manager’s fee was also reasonable compared to its peers and investors had the opportunity of earning extra income from the interest on those accounts. 

“One weakness of the currency ETFs is that new units are only priced at the close of local trade on the Australian sharemarket when they could be priced more frequently given the liquidity and transparency of the global foreign exchange market,” Mr Govender said. 

“A” ratings were awarded to Betashares ETFs tracking the British Pound, the Euro and the US dollar. van Eyk also awarded A ratings to the S&P/ASX Financials Sector ETF and the S&P/ASX200 Resources Sector ETF, which tracks the performance of the mining sector. 

The BetaShares Gold Bullion ETF, which hedges the US dollar exposure of the gold price, also received an “A” rating as it was found to track the index closely.

The post van Eyk awards three international small cap managers an “A” rating appeared first on AdviserVoice.