Which global small/mid caps should investors keep tabs on?


With global small/mid caps poised to weather 2019 well, Money Management used FE Analytics to look at which global small/mid cap funds topped the charts for the three years to 30 November 2018.
The five FE Crown-rated Supervised fund, which invests heavily (54 per cent) in basic materials, followed by industrials (26 per cent), sat in the top spot for that time period with 13.35 per cent returns.
The five FE Crown-rated Pengana Global Small Companies fund, with top holdings like Open Text Corp, Carmax Inc, Tripadvisor and Nice Information Service Co, sat just under the index with returns of 8.71 per cent.
Vanguard’s International Small Companies fund trailed behind with 8.15 per cent, followed by Yarra Global Small Companies with 7.89 per cent.
Prime Value Emerging Opportunities and Bell Asset Management’s Global Emerging Companies were also top performers with returns of 7.71 per cent and 7.62 per cent respectively.
Bell AM’s chief investment officer, Ned Bell, also told Money Management that global small/mid caps would take off in 2019 given their detachment from the US-China trade war, but feared emerging markets would struggle again.
The funds outperformed the MSCI AC World SMID Cap index, which is one of the common benchmarks used by global equity managers, which returned 7.61 per cent for that same time period.
The chart below tracks the performance of the top six funds as compared to the MSCI AC World SMID Cap index and the global small/mid cap sector average for the three years to 30 November 2018.
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