Fairtree is honoured to receive another Raging Bull Trophy

Chantelle Baptiste

Cor Booysen, Co-Portfolio Manager of the Fairtree Equity Prescient Fund

Stephen Brown, Co-Portfolio Manager of the Fairtree Equity Prescient Fund

For the fourth year running, Fairtree scooped two equity category Raging Bull awards.

The award ceremony, held virtually in Cape Town yesterday, honoured unit trust companies and funds for top performance for the period to end December 2020. Fairtree was nominated in two categories and won both, straight three year performance by a South Africa equity general fund, and the second for risk-adjusted performance over five years.

Even more notable is that the fund has claimed the Raging Bull for the best risk-adjusted performance by a South Africa equity general fund over five years for four years in a row.

“Despite a difficult year, we are delighted for the recognition of the Raging Bulls. It affirms our commitment to our deeply entrenched values and sound investment philosophy of creating long-term wealth for our clients,” said Bradley Anthony, Fairtree Managing Director.

He expressed Fairtree’s gratitude for the long and valuable relationships with clients and their advisers and thanked them for their continued support and trust in what was a difficult investment period.

Raging Bull winners, Stephen Brown and Cor Booysen are co-portfolio managers of the Fairtree Equity Prescient Fund which returned 19.81% after fees in 2020. The fund has an average annualized return of 14.87% since inception in 2011.

“Our investment philosophy is based on three principles – holistic, diversified and flexible, which we believe lead to better portfolio returns”, said Booysen on behalf of the co-managers.

“Due to the externalised nature of the South African equity market, we believe that both top-down and bottom-up analysis are required to make sound investment decisions,” said Booysen.

“We believe it is better to own a well-diversified portfolio that is positioned to perform under most outcomes than to concentrate on a few positions that will do well during a single economic outcome,” he added.

Booysen said they value the ability to change their portfolio when the environment changes, adapting quickly to changes in the economic conditions that affect the earnings outlook of companies.

“Four sectors on the JSE had standout performances during 2020. These were Gold miners, PGM miners, Diversified miners as well as Naspers/Prosus. We were fortunate to start 2020 with large exposure to these four sectors.”

The fund benefitted from sizeable positions in Impala, Northam and African Rainbow Minerals.

“We continue to have large positions in Gold, PGM and Diversified mining as well as Naspers, but have increased our positions in shares exposed to the SA economy (SA Inc).” said Booysen.