No asset class spared from poor performance
No asset class was exempt from poor performance in this edition of the FE fundinfo Crown Ratings with equity, bond and multi-assets sectors all seeing high volumes of 1 Crown-rated funds.
Within the Australian Core Strategies universe, the worst-affected sectors were both mixed asset ones with the mixed asset – moderate and mixed asset –cautious sectors both seeing over 40% of their funds receive a 1 Crown rating.
In the mixed asset – moderate sector, 55% of funds received a 1 Crown rating. There were 65 funds in this sector and 36 funds were only rated with 1 Crown.
There were seven funds which were downgraded from 2 Crowns to 1 but the majority had retained their 1 Crown rating.
The downgraded funds were Optimix Wholesale Moderate Trust, AXA Generations Defensive, Advance Moderate Multi Blend, Russell Conservative, BT Wholesale Multi-manager Conservative, Perpetual Select Investments Diversified and AMP Experts Choice Conservative.
In the cautious sector, some 41% of funds received only 1 Crown and the three funds which were downgraded were MyNorth Index Defensive, Bendigo Wealth Defensive Wholesale and Onepath Wholesale Capital Stable Trust.
The performance of these two sectors compared to just 6% of funds in the mixed asset –aggressive sector receiving a 1 Crown rating and 7% in the mixed asset – growth sector, indicating investors were being penalised by remaining in the balanced or cautious version which is often a default option for investors.
Meanwhile, the Australian equity income sector saw 44% of funds receive a 1 Crown rating and the diversified credit sector had 40% of its funds with 1 Crown.
The diversified credit sector included two funds, Bentham High Yield and PIMCO Capital Securities Wholesale, which were downgraded from 5 Crowns to 1.
There was just one fund in the Australian equity income sector which received a downgrade in this rebalance. This was the IML Equity Income fund which had previously been rated as 2 Crowns in the previous edition of the report.
The sector with the highest volume of 1 Crown funds was the global equity sector at 58 funds, however this only represented 22% of the total sector.
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
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