Gaudi Schneider

Quantifeed, Asia’s leading provider of B2B digital wealth management solutions, has announced today the launch of a new model portfolio of the most valued brands in the world.

The Most Valuable Brands US strategy consists of a quantitative selection of US-listed companies with strong brands that consumers value most and with which they are most familiar.

To identify these brands, Quantifeed ranks companies by their brand value, defined as intellectual property, trademarks and icons. Given the relevance the strategy gives to brand value, the model portfolio has a higher representation of sectors that are highly visible to consumers, such as consumer staples and technology.

Household names such as Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, AT&T, Toyota and Walmart are represented in the current portfolio.

“It is often said that a person should only own stocks of companies whose products they know and understand.  Investors may feel a strong connection to a portfolio when it contains familiar brands of products and services they know and use. This strategy can also work to the advantage of financial advisors who may be looking for straightforward ways to engage clients in investment discussions,” said Gaudi Schneider, Senior Quantitative Strategist at Quantifeed.

The Most Valuable Brands US strategy is up 16.8% year to date, outperforming the broad US stock market by 5.3%.

Graeme Brant, Senior Executive for Strategic Partnerships at Quantifeed, said, “The products and services provide by these companies are part of our daily lives, and they represent of the largest companies traded in the US.”

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Gaudi Schneider

Leading provider of B2B digital wealth management solutions in Asia Pacific, Quantifeed, yesterday launched a model portfolio to capture the opportunities of the growing global industry of self-driving cars.

Quantifeed’s model portfolio includes a selection of companies leading the development of self-driving cars, including technology providers and vehicle part suppliers.

“We’ve carefully selected companies who are currently benefiting from the new automotive technologies around the world or are expected to benefit from it in the near future”, said Quantifeed’s Senior Quantitative Analyst, Gaudi Schneider.

Current holdings in the initial portfolio include:

• Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), a U.S. based manufacturer whose market capitalisation overtook Ford and General Motors this year, despite its much lower production numbers.
• Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), which is currently developing its project Waymo, one of the most advanced and ambitious undertakings in the field of fully self-driving cars.
• Delphi (NYSE: DLPH), a U.K. based vehicle parts supplier, given its record growth in the segments used in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), connectivity (vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure) and in-car-entertainment systems.
• Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), a U.S. based manufacturer of high performance processors. Its products are used for gaming, self-driving car technology, artificial intelligence, visualisation and data-centres.

Spurred by Tesla’s initial success, incumbent car makers like Ford (NYSE: F) also invest greatly in the development of new systems for the development of hybrid or electric vehicles (EV). Hybrids and EVs are viewed as a necessity for self-driving cars, as their electric engine can more easily integrate with an electric device compared to combustion engines.

“While the relationship between incumbent carmakers, vehicle part manufacturers and new entrants from Silicon Valley is sometimes portrayed as a competition, we at Quantifeed view it as a symbiotic relationship,” said Quantifeed’s Senior Quantitative strategist Gaudi Schneider.

“The different industries in our model portfolio bring different skills to the table. The tech companies supply computing power, connectivity, integration, innovation and artificial intelligence that have found use in other domains and are now being transferred to the automotive industry.

“The carmakers are familiar with the industry-specific long planning and development cycles, which take several years, the management of a vast supply chain, and the high safety requirements,” he explained.

Graeme Brant, Quantifeed’s Senior Executive for Strategic Partnerships in Australia, said that wealth managers across the APAC region are looking for more engaging investment opportunities for their clients.

“A portfolio tracking the performance of companies involved in the emerging self-driving cars industry is valuable for advisors, not only because of the potential growth that represents for their clients’ portfolios, but also because it’s a sector that can bring significant diversification benefits”, he said.

“Similarly, at Quantifeed we have developed model portfolios for our clients with other modern global industries, like 3D printing, robotics and social media, all of which can benefit advisors to increase their engagement with customers,” he added.

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