Zenith releases Aussie shares sector review

Zenith has released its 2010 Australian Shares sector review, with seven new funds receiving 'highly recommended' ratings.

From an initial universe of 150 funds, nine received the highest rating, 40 were ‘recommended’ while 101 did not pass Zenith’s ratings criteria.

Funds offered by BT, Concord, Fidelity, Greencape, Perpetual and Zurich joined funds from Ausbil and Perpetual in the ‘highly recommended’ category.

“In all cases the upgraded funds have been rated by Zenith on multiple occasions,” said Zenith’s head of research, Ben Davis.

“As we have become more familiar with these offerings, we have increased our conviction in various aspects of our qualitative assessment. The performance of each strategy has also continued to be strong relative to their peer groups.”

Active managers continued to outperform other managers, Davis said.

“In aggregate, most active managers we have assessed currently have underweights to the financials and materials sectors — the two largest sectors in the Australian market. The relative performance of these sectors will be key in determining whether active managers add value over the short term.”

Investment analyst Graeme Miller said Australia had been buoyed by increased linkages with Asia and emerging markets, but cautioned investors to ensure portfolios were adequately diversified.

“Although the idea that higher economic growth equates to higher stock market returns sounds intuitively appealing, in practice this is not always the case,” he said.

“Zenith’s message to investors is that they should be careful combining allocations to Australian equity, emerging market, China-specific, and commodity/resources sector managed funds as these exposures may be highly correlated on the downside if commodity prices were to fall sharply, and therefore may not necessarily provide adequate asset class diversification.”