The fund, managed by Sydney-based Tribeca Investment Partners and distributed by GSFM, offers investors style-neutral exposure to Australian smaller companies. It is co-managed by David Aylward and Simon Brown, who are supported by a team of 18 investment professionals.

The ratings upgrade to ‘Recommended’ comes just over a year after Adam Lavis was appointed to chief executive officer relinquishing co-portfolio manager, David Aylward of firm-wide management responsibilities.

In its report, Zenith said it views this development favourably.

“It allows Aylward to focus solely on investment-related duties. Zenith believes the portfolio managers have the requisite experience to successfully manage the Fund,” Zenith said.

Zenith said that its “conviction in the fund is centred on the investment capabilities and experience of the senior investment team members. In addition, we view the strong, positive trajectory in the strategy’s asset base positively.

“Overall, Zenith believes the Fund is well-placed to meet its investment objectives,” Zenith said.

Founded in Sydney in 1998, Tribeca Investment Partners specialises in managing high excess return, style-neutral strategies. Following the management buyout of GSFM’s stake in the business, Tribeca is 100 per cent owned by senior staff members. GSFM continues to distribute Tribeca’s products, which Zenith notes as a positive arrangement.

GSFM CEO, Damien McIntyre said GSFM and Tribeca have been working towards this rating for some time, and like Zenith, he is optimistic for what can be achieved in the retail space.

“The Tribeca Australian Smaller Companies Fund has the longest track record in the retail market for funds that invest in small companies.

“The team’s approach has been to thoroughly analyse the financial aspects of each of the companies they invest in, as well as understand the company’s competitive advantage, its industry structure, key earning sensitivities and the management team’s long-term strategy.

“The fund is best suited for investors looking to invest in Australian small companies and seeking a well-diversified and actively managed fund, or investors looking for tax-effective alternatives to superannuation funds.”

The post Zenith Investment Partners upgrades Tribeca Australian Smaller Companies Fund to ‘Recommended’ appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Stephen Miller

The first half of 2022 will continue to be an uncertain time for markets as the full impact of the Omicron variant makes its mark on the Australian economy – but there are still opportunities for investors, with certain sectors and thematics set to shine, according to GSFM and its fund manager partners Munro Partners, Tribeca Investment Partners and Redpoint investment Management.

Munro Investment Partners chief investment officer, Nick Griffin, says he remains positive on global equity markets in 2022, although he concedes the outlook is murkier than usual.

“Market outlook predictions have become increasingly problematic in the last few years, and 2022 looks to be no exception. However, despite the many unknowns, there are a couple of trends that are now reasonably clear.

“One is that growth will slow.  Alas, the world can only re-open once and many businesses will begin the cycle by being assessed against the strong re-opening led numbers they produced in 2021. At the same time, government stimulus will begin to run off, most notably in the US.

“Regardless of economic outlook, our focus remains on identifying sustainable growth trends and the resulting winning stocks. And the trends of decarbonisation, eCommerce or cloud computing don’t abate because the macro landscape evolves.

“The key areas where we see positive tailwinds for 2022 include climate – where the race to decarbonise the planet is likely to accelerate as corporates and countries alike start to implement plans to reach carbon net zero by 2050 – and high performance computing – as every major corporate seeks to harness the power of its own data and implements AI across their organisations. This will unleash a torrent of silicon demand that should lead to exponential growth for the key players in the semiconductor industry,” Mr Griffin says.

Meanwhile GSFM investment strategist, Stephen Miller, says bond yields have started the year under pressure and that seems likely to continue.

“Notwithstanding the recent increase in yields, bond markets remain at close to historically low levels. More tellingly, the gap between the 10-year bond yield and annual core CPI inflation was close to 4 per cent in December, the highest gap since February 1975.

“Persistence in inflation and a rapid scaling back of central bank purchases could send bond yields significantly higher as bond markets price in that eventuality.

“At this point, inflation continues to surprise on the upside with December readings in the US, Europe, the UK and Canada all exceeding expectations and all close to multi-decade highs. This is not a comforting scenario for global equity markets. However, it must be acknowledged that a more benign scenario has central banks getting on top of inflation quickly and bond markets retaining confidence in central banks’ ability to do so.

“The same challenges exist locally even if their magnitude may be slightly less. Of course, the Australian economy is different from other developed economies not least in its exposure to China, but not sufficiently so that the same laws of supply and demand and their effect on prices do not apply here,” Mr Miller says.

Pointing to the local share market, Tribeca Investment Partners portfolio manager, David Aylward, says that uncertainty will be the order of the day – at least for the first quarter of 2022.

“Omicron may be a game changer, possibly washing the COVID-19 recession that Australia thought it had avoided up on our shores.

“With previous COVID-19 variants, the government response was to implement a lock-down where everyone stayed home, and when lock-downs were lifted they later came out and spent money. And the government’s fiscal stimulus programs ensured there was money to spend.

“From an economic point of view this was a net positive. But it is different this time. With Omicron people either don’t want to go out, or they can’t go out because they are isolating – and this time there is no government stimulus to support their spending in the economy.

“This Omicron impact will be an important narrative in the upcoming Australian reporting season. It won’t necessarily show up in the numbers as yet, but it will be interesting to hear company management remarks on how they have been trading recently, and how their supply chains have been impacted.

“But even with this uncertainty that there will always be opportunity in markets, on the long and on the short side. One such area of opportunity comes from the energy transition.

“The energy transition is going to be hugely inflationary. When you combine that with the likely stimulus program coming out of China over the next six months, we could be locking in a supercycle round two for commodities. This will have significant ramifications for markets.

“A lot of stocks in the mid cap sector will be exposed to benefit from that. And it will be quite a positive for small caps as well.

“Mid and small sized Australian companies can do well in 2022 but commodity-based stocks will need to do a lot of the heavy lifting. A rebound in services can contribute as we move past Omicron but non-earners and consumer finance type stocks will likely find inflation and higher interest rates tough going,” Mr Aylward says.

Redpoint Investment Management chief investment officer, Max Cappetta, says that while the upcoming reporting season is likely to provide a strong overall dividend harvest, investors need to ensure they look beyond high yielding names and look ahead to where dividends will be growing most in the future.

“We are expecting approximately 130 dividend announcements across the ASX200 in the months of February and March 2022 and it will be a mixed bag. It is important to look across the entire market – and capture income across all sectors and yields – because there will always be winners and losers within each of these groups.

“The mining sector was responsible for carrying the ASX200 to a record aggregate dividend payment year in 2021 and remains well placed to provide solid cashflows again in 2022 supported by more accommodative policy in China.  However, there are many opportunities in the metals of tomorrow such as copper and lithium and Australia has some great companies with great assets already in production across the globe.

“Those companies benefitting from a domestic consumer unable to travel and move more freely, such as JB HIFI, consumer group GUD and auto retailer Eagers are also likely to deliver strong dividend yields in February. 

“We also see the potential for revenue and profit growth in 2022 in the lower yielding healthcare sector from diagnostics services firms such as Healius and Sonic.

“We expect modest dividend growth from banks and financials even though dividends in this sector remain below pre-COVID highs.  Investor should also note that the dividends of major banks are offset through the year with Commonwealth Bank being first up in mid-February.  This provides a valuable insight into trading conditions for the sector,”  Mr Cappetta says.

The post Global and local market outlook positive but COVID-19 uncertainty remains appeared first on AdviserVoice.

In this new role Mr Daily will work alongside David Aylward (managing director and portfolio manager), Sean Fenton (director and portfolio manager) and Kylie Osgood (director and chief operating officer) in continuing to develop solutions that fit clients’ needs with the returns that they expect.

Mr Aylward said this appointment coincides with growth in the business – particularly the growing output of the quantitative team – and recognises the significant contribution Mr Daily makes to Tribeca across the breadth of its investment processes.

“Before joining Tribeca, Mr Daily was with Barclays Global Investors (BGI) in a variety of leadership roles including global head of investment process – Global Market Strategies Group (GMSG); Hedge Fund Management Group (HFMG) and Client Solutions (CS).

“Prior to these broader executive roles he was a senior portfolio manager within GMSG, which was BGI’s large macro and currency overlay business.

“Chris’ past experience, combined with his time at Tribeca as the lead portfolio manager of the Global Total Return Fund, means he is well placed to take on this new role.”

While continuing to be the lead portfolio manager of the Global Total Return Fund, Mr Daily’s primary focus will also involve:

• Continuing to work with the expanded quantitative team on their growing output
• Monitoring the fundamental analysis teams’ output and interaction with the Conviction System (Chris led the successful implementation of this addition to Tribeca’s process over the last couple of years)
• Maintaining and continuing to lead the development of the portfolio management and risk systems
• The ongoing development of total return strategies.

Mr Daily has a Masters of Engineering from the University of Western Australia, Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (cum laude) from Princeton University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Charter holder.

The post New appointment at Tribeca appeared first on AdviserVoice.