Our Team | Our Investment Beliefs | Media Centre
Our investment beliefs have been developed through decades of experience and in-depth academic and scientific research. Instrumental in achieving our objectives, our key beliefs guide us over the long term as they represent a shared understanding and enable a framework for accountability. They form our guiding principles and support the long-term relationships we form with our clients. These beliefs can be used to empower our clients to make smart decisions to achieve their goals.
1) We believe that investing is deliberate and requires discipline.
Investing for the long term means that any short-term strategies will be speculative and may introduce needless additional risk into a portfolio. There are many distractions when investing, including media noise, financial services trends and human emotions. It is important to remain deliberate and disciplined by committing to long-term strategies.
2) We believe that markets work and are generally efficient.
Markets work, and for investment purposes securities are fairly priced most of the time. These prices reflect and are impacted by financial news, research, political, economic and social events, as well as how investors interpret all of this information.
3) We believe that risk and return are intrinsically linked.
Investments earning higher relative returns usually carry higher risk. Conversely, investments earner lower returns usually carry a lower risk. Our focus on risk means we deliberately consider whether a risk can be considered a rewarded risk. This means investing according to an appropriate amount of risk.
4) We believe that diversification is vital.
Diversification applies to all markets, not just equity markets, and it reduces uncertainty. Investment strategies concentrated in relatively few securities increase risk without providing additional expected return. The converse is that broad diversification (beyond the index) adds return while reducing risk. Diversification is the only proven means of mitigating risk in investing for the long term.
5) We believe that costs and taxes are key factors.
Investment strategies should be designed to capture stronger exposure to the factors that drive returns. Transaction costs should be minimised through innovative trading techniques, portfolio engineering and portfolio structure. Our investment strategies provide global exposure to thousands of diverse equities and defensive assets in order to minimise risk, and have been carefully engineered to minimise transaction and tax costs. These cost savings can greatly boost clients’ investment performance on a compounded basis over many years.