Q:  What’s the investment philosophy of the fund?

A: We believe that, in highly efficient markets, structuring intuition to eliminate emotion, and thus focus on what really makes the difference, is key to achieving superior performance results. A consistent approach, combining the speed and discipline of computer processing with the skills and adaptability of human judgment, provides optimal conditions to achieve this objective.

The fund’s investment strategy is based on an active, bottom-up approach, combining the output of a proprietary quantitative model with a disciplined judgmental overlay by US market specialists. The model brings its ability to crunch multiple numbers quickly and reliably, to preselect a number of investment recommendations. Investment professionals, on the other hand, add value through a deep research to understand the fundamentals of each company. This allows them to detect any “special situation” that may have been misinterpreted by the computer, and make the final decision among the model’s recommendations.

This strategy, designed for investors seeking a pure exposure to the US large cap equity market, results in a fully invested, concentrated portfolio. It aims to achieve a 200-300 bp annual excess return over the S&P 500 index with a trackingerror close to 7% (both measured over the medium term).

Q:  What are you looking for in the long term?

A: We’re trying to assess the real situation behind the market’s emotional reactions to the information we are receiving both at the micro and the macro level. Let’s assume for example that same store sales for a given month have just been reported at, say, 3%. Many investors just check how this figure compares to expectations and, if their forecast was 3.1%, they may react very negatively and immediately sell the stock. As far as we are concerned, the question we aim to ask ourselves is “What does this 3% tell us about the company’s current business?” This may lead us to interprete positively a datapoint that has disappointed the market, just because fundamentals eventually prevail when emotions have settled down.

Q:  But your process is based on looking for growth companies, is that correct?

A: Yes, we have a growth bias. It’s not a huge growth bias; the original objective is to deliver good performance over any market cycle and we aim to beat the S&P 500 at any stage of the cycle, but our research has shown that a growth bias would be helpful in achieving this objective.

Q:  How that philosophy translates into an investment strategy and process?

A: Securities are selected from an investment universe comprised of 500-600 stocks offering the broadest analyst coverage as well as the highest liquidity in the US market. Market capitalizations and sector representations in the S&P 500 Index are used as additional criteria in the quarterly reconstruction of that universe.

The model first ranks stocks in accordance with a number of indicators, which include mainly growth-oriented parameters (static and dynamic measures of trends in profitability, using both reported and forecast data) and, to a lesser extent, valuation factors (mainly relative to earnings and their expected growth). Stocks held in the portfolio and falling to the bottom 30% of the resulting ranking constitute the model's Sell list, whereas the Buy list comprises all securities in the top 5% that are not yet held.

The model's recommendations are then reviewed in detail by dedicated market specialists. Sell recommendations are checked with a special focus on identifying any particular biases which may have misled the model, as only very exceptional circumstances can lead us to override such recommendations. A careful study is carried out on all Buy candidates to fully understand their operating environment, activity, strategy, financial situation, and subsequently their outlook.

The team's market specialists naturally discuss investment views on a daily basis, but investment decisions are normally made only once a month in a portfolio recomposition committee. In a market where plentiful, sometimes contradictory information may prove a source of premature decisions, this discipline guarantees that the process is kept free from any influence of emotion leading to erratic strategies.

The model’s guidelines provide that a fixed number of stocks should be held. Sell candidates are therefore reviewed and validated first. Any sale triggers the selection of another stock for replacement. Such selection can be made freely by the market specialists, as long as it is made within the model's Buy list. The monthly committee enables the team to finalize its position in light of the latest indications received from the model. Consensus is sought, and usually reached, but a single professional (the fund manager) has the final say.

It should be noted that every single parameter in the strategy, from stock selection criteria to the number of securities held and their respective weights, is the result of extensive in-house research on the market’s characteristics. The investment process is driven by, and therefore evolves with, the features of our model. These are upgraded from time to time as a result of the ongoing research process undertaken to regularly enhance the strategy.

Q:  Could you give us an example of decisions influenced by the model?

A: All of our decisions are influenced by the model, which sets limits to what our judgement can lead us to do: we almost systematically follow the model’s Sell recommendations, and we never consider buying a stock which is not in its Buy list. We have been using and refining that model for so long that, even when our strategy appears to be wrong and underperform for a while, we continue to follow the model because we know its periods of weakness are usually followed by strong rebounds.

To take a concrete example, we sold Intel a couple of quarters ago. At that time, we didn’t have a very strong conviction that we were doing the right thing, but we did not find any serious reason to conclude that the model was wrong, and therefore we applied our discipline. AMD was, once again, trying to gain market share and often in the past, Intel has been able to fight back such attempts quickly and effectively just by cutting prices. But since then we’ve seen the development of their battle, which confirmed that selling was the right move.

Q:  What does the research process on the quant side include?

A: The best way of predicting the market’s future behaviors is to look at the way it has reacted in similar situations in the past. But for this to work, you must observe such long periods that you can reasonably assume you’ve met all the instances that might happen in the future.