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12/06/22
22:14
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Originally posted by Fundidetective:
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Just general banter on anything FOR I suppose? Blame me I guess as I have zeroed in all their International. After 10 years, do you think they have figured out the Aussie fund? In my view, there are similar issues there as well. Learning with real money is nice for them but not for investors on basics of portfolio construction and liquidity management. 5 and 10 year results speak volumes here. Shallow bench of companies. I'm told there is conflicting styles and personality even in this team. Someone can verify that for me, but looking at their biographies, it probably should not surprise. That said, Aussie has less confused in style, as they stick to beaten down value micro-caps more consistently. Many regulars here know the staff turnover here has been detrimental to performance. Others can comment why this has been the case. Yes, I pick on them because I am very clear what investing on behalf of investors should and shouldn't be. It's more than picking stocks. It's more than the finding of value in unlikely places. And certainly, it's more than gloating about how smart you are across social media. It's incredible how they bagged MFG when their own performance was capitulating. Now they are beating down on share based compensation like it's going to help them do well. And yeah, let's roll out a whisky podcast while their investors are suffering; 'all is good, we are chill' ... 'markets? bah'. How tone deaf can one be? FOR Aussie fund reached 10 years not long ago. That's a long time to learn how to invest. Show me the money and I will back off and correct my labelling of FOR. Show me you beat the market consistently. Show me you didn't just do 1.6% pa over 5 years in a market that went up 10% pa. All that volatility (headache) to lose 8.4% pa against buying the index (this is a REAL financial loss). Show me how you justify 1.1% MER. And let's not go too deep into that place called compensation. The individuals get paid very very well (salary, bonuses in that ONE year and dividends) in delivering this shocking performance. So no, there is no alignment here with investors. In assessing the health and confidence of a fund, especially a LIT or LIC, I ask if it wasn't captive funds, how much money do you think they will be managing? My guess is barely triple digits at best.
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All fair and valid points. The only thing Is offer in their defence is that the past ten years have been awful for value investors. Although I only bought in during Feb/Mar 2020, I've watched the Aussie fund very closely since it's inception. I benchmarked my own stock picking against it on the basis that Steve (I believed back then) was a safe bet to beat the market so the massive temporal cost of personally stock picking could only be justified if I was reliably beating the best option that didn't take up much time, which I believed to be Steve. Aside from the odd howler (eg Hughes Drilling, MMA offshore etc) I can't say that there have been too many bad decisions in the Aussie Fund by Steve that we apparent to me a priori.