In my view, a great list Woolly. Most, if not all of these, would have also been on my list if I hadn't been trying not to have something 2 pages long! On Perpetual Concentrated and SRI, I totally understand your point of view. But for the sake of discussion while I am marooned on the couch suffering from the aftermath of an enthusiastic whisky tasting yesterday, here is my counterpoint.
The Concentrated Fund is a core large cap offering and has an objective to outperform the ASX300 by 2% - 3% pa (gross of fees) over rolling three year periods. So how has it done? Here is the three year rolling excess return over the ASX300 net of fees. Fees are 1.1% pa, so if you add that back, they have done a pretty good job I reckon. Remember, Perpetual have a very strong focus on value, so when the market bolts ahead or is otherwise irrational in their view, they tend to lag behind.
Then we have the Perpetual SRI Fund. This is another great fund. But one of the key reasons it has been such a great performer in the past is that is has tended to have a pronounced bias to small/micro caps. This means that it tends to show returns that are higher then large caps with associated higher volatility (as measured be SD). You can see this bear out in the charts below.
This is by no means a bad thing. Bu it is important to understand the drivers of returns. I have held both funds over the years, although I admit I have ditched the Concentrated Fund and kept the SRI Fund as it I believe it fits by portfolio objectives better (high growth). But at the end of the day, Perpetual is an excellent manager of active equities, one of the few that are relatively consistent over the medium-long term in comparison to peers.
At the end of the day, as we all (I hope) know, picking active managers worth having is no easy task. In my view, it's about consistency in a managers approach, assuming it logical and has a demonstrated effectiveness. Otherwise, you might as well go and invest in passive funds and accept that philosophy (which also fine). But remember, no active manager will beat the market all the time. Woolly, I know that I don't need to tell you that. It's just for some of the other readers.
