GCI Balanced have just been awarded a 5 star rating with Morningstar

South African unit trust fund GCI Balanced has been awarded a 5-star rating by investment research firm Morningstar, firmly placing GCI in the top 10% of all funds in the Unit Trust and Mutual funds universe.

The Morningstar system is a risk-adjusted rating that brings performance, return, and risk together into one evaluation.

This ranking is a result of GCI¹s Stop Loss strategy, according to fund manager Alex Cook. He believes that the strong and steady investment growth over the past few years is not sustainable and more caution should prevail going forward.

³Warren Buffet once said, ŒThe first rule (of investment) is not to lose.

The second rule is not to forget the first rule¹. That¹s how we manage our fund ­ to preserve our client¹s capital, to exit investments that are at risk, and to enter the markets at attractive price prices. We compete against a benchmark that beats inflation, not against other funds. If the market goes down by 35%, we¹re not happy to tell our investors that although we¹ve outperformed other funds we¹ve still lost them money. We have not had a down year and we don¹t intend to.²

GCI Balanced ranks 2nd out of 38 funds in the Prudential Variable Equity Sector with a return of 72% (15% per annum) from the GCI Balanced fund¹s inception in September 2005 and 1st out of 48 funds with a return of 16% over the last 24 months.