Artemis Strategic Assets
To print fund fact sheets, please use the print option in the Factsheet Tools section in the top right corner:
A way for individual investors to pool their money together, allowing them to invest in assets that would otherwise be unobtainable
The person who decides where the fund's money should be invested. As such, finding a talented manager (such as those with a Citywire rating) is of paramount importance
Funds are grouped together into sectors, allowing fund managers to be judged against their benchmarks and peer group. Each sector has rules about what assets funds are allowed to invest in
A generic term meaning 'what you own'. If you can buy it, it's an asset. In the world of investments the most common assets are shares, bonds, property and cash.
A group of assets with similar properties. For example, while shares will rise or fall in price individually, economic factors can affect all shares similarly. The same economic factors might affect bonds very differently – so shares and bonds are separate asset classes.
The process of deciding which asset classes to invest in. Successful asset allocation is often more important than selecting individual assets (for example deciding whether to invest mainly in shares, rather than which shares to invest in). Since most fund managers are tied to their sector rules, you need to either do your own asset allocation or buy a managed fund.
A measure of how different areas of the markets are performing, against which funds can be compared. For example, a fund in the UK All Companies sector might be compared against the FTSE All-Share index of every company traded on the London Stock Exchange. A good fund manager will be able to beat the benchmark most of the time, but very few can.
A contract representing something of financial value. Shares and bonds are the most common types of securities.
Unlike most funds, which are restricted to investing in particular markets by the rules of their sector, managed funds can invest in just about anything. While they can have subtly different objectives, they are split into 'Active Managed', where the manager is given free reign; 'Balanced Managed', where the manager can invest a maximum of 85% in shares to reduce risk; and 'Cautious Managed' with a 60% maximum in shares.
A share in a company represents part ownership of its assets (e.g. its buildings, intellectual property and so on) and its future income (paid out as dividends). The value of a share depends largely on other investors' expectations of the company's future growth and income.
Companies can issue bonds as a way of raising money. When you buy a bond, the company is agreeing to pay you a fixed income (hence the alternative name 'fixed income securities') for a certain time period, after which your money is repaid. If investors suspect a company may be unable to repay, they will demand a higher income or 'yield' - hence 'high yield bonds'.
In investing, 'risk' can refer to different things, but essentially means the possibility that your objectives won't be met. In this context, risk is a calculation of the 'standard deviation' of returns each month – in otherwords, a measure of how rocky the returns are. The higher the rank, the less risk the fund takes with your money.
This is a way of calculating 'risk adjusted returns' – i.e. how much value the fund is adding above the risk it takes to generate its returns. The higher the number the better.
A measure of how your investments have performed, relative to your initial investment. For example if you invest £1,000 in a fund, and a year later your investment is worth £1,100, you've made a 10% return.
Comparing the maximum loss for different managers (or between a manager and their benchmarks, as on these factsheets) over a given period is a good way of seeing who's doing the best job of safeguarding investors' money. Otherwise known as maximum 'drawdown', this is a measure of how much you would lose if you bought an investment at its most expensive and sold at its cheapest. For example if a fund was worth £1 a unit at one point but then fell to 50p – regardless of what happened in the meantime – the fund's loss would be 50%.
updated on 24/05/2013
CHANGE IN PRICE
over 3 years to 24/05/2013
Artemis Strategic Assets
TOTAL RETURN over 1 month to 24/05/2013
Artemis Strategic Assets Benchmark
Who runs this fund?
How this fund has performed overView full chart tool
Maximum loss on £1000
How Artemis Strategic Assets compares to the sector over
How has Artemis Strategic Assets performed?
How Artemis Strategic Assets compares to the sector over
Sectors: What is this fund investing in? Updated 31-03-2013
Top 10 holdings Updated 31-03-2013
News about: Artemis Strategic Assets
- Launch Date 26 May 2009
- Fund size (R Acc) £881m
- Base Currency GBX
- ISIN GB00B3VDDQ59
- Minimum initial investment £1000
- Minimum additional investment £1000
- Annual management charge1.5%
- Initial charge5.3%
Artemis Strategic Assets
by Jonathan Miller on May 23, 2013 at 12:46
He has topped up his position, following a near 20% drop, taking the portfolio’s commodities position to 10%. Half of this exposure is directly in gold and despite the sudden fall leaving some investors questioning its merit, Littlewood is not fazed. In fact he believes its fundamentals have become even stronger this year.
‘Conditions are still extremely powerful for gold and the main reason comes back to sovereign debt. I don’t see a way of governments successfully unwinding quantitative easing or central bank policies,’ he says.
Given that negative real interest rates look set to continue provides him further comfort to say the outlook for gold is very good. There is also a further 4% holding in precious metal equities within the multi-asset portfolio.
‘Bond market will rebel’
As market moves in recent years have centred around quantitative easing and central bank actions, Littlewood doubts there will be a successful way of unwinding these policies.
‘I think one day the bond market will rebel against this and very sharply indeed. If a sovereign debt crisis hit us tomorrow, it would go around the world quickly,’
This is why the Japanese bond market is being shorted as the country is the most indebted in the world. He believes there is a good chance that the yield will go up a ‘long long way’ in years to come.
Littlewood also warns that if inflation increases, it will be difficult to see interest rates going up. He thinks it would be an impossible scenario for Europe, it would do extreme damage to the UK housing market and almost bankrupt Japan.
And with quantitative easing being the recurrent policy tool, the upshot is clear in Littlewood’s eyes. ‘History shows there will always be a stage of hyperinflation if you print and print and print. From all the outcomes this is the most deadly as it kills economies. Governments reneging on their debt is painful at times but it will wash through the system.’
Although the government bond market rally has impacted on performance, as his positions look to profit from these rising, he believes there will be a strong reversal down the line.
‘One day I think the central bankers will lose control of their bond markets which means there’ll be inflation so government bond yields will go up a long way.’
Equity exposure at historic low
With the strong equity rally also linked to government intervention, Littlewood believes any attempt to withdraw printing money programmes will have a bad effect on shares. This is why he has cut the net equity exposure to 47%, a historic low in the fund’s four year life.
Profits have also been taken and 26% of the £880 million is in cash, as Littlewood is ready to wait for a pullback and redeploy this at more attractive levels.
‘Shares look extremely cheap versus bonds but the problem I’ve got here is that when bond yields normalise, shares will no longer look cheap. Equities have been strong but most of it has been a rerating rather than greater growth and it is hard to see profits go up from here’.
Holdings are focused on large caps as this is deemed safer. At a country level, half the exposure is to the UK and nearly a third in the US. Up until recently Japan had been a 7% position but this has been cut to just 1% remains following the strong rally.
The fund also has exposure to currencies where the underlying countries are benefiting from a current account surplus such as the Singapore dollar and Malaysian ringgit. Whilst further gains are looking to be made from a weakening yen and euro.
Since launch in May 2009 to 30 April 2013, the fund has returned 50.3% versus 38% for the sector average in the Multi Strategy sector.
Citywire Selection Verdict: William Littlewood invests across equities, bonds, commodities and currencies. He is also able to use shorting powers which aim to profit from market falls. Although exposure is diversified, the fund has tended to have a similar performance pattern to that of equities. This is because Littlewood is heavily shorting Western government bonds that have rallied during periods of risk aversion. His macroeconomic approach makes him believe yields on Western debt are unsustainable. So the fund will benefit when appetite for these bonds does meaningfully reverse.
For more details view the latest factsheet .
What is Citywire Selection?
Citywire Selection is an investment guide containing around 150 of the best ways to invest in a range of areas, as chosen by our research team using a rigorous and transparent process.
We don't sell funds, so you can trust the independence of our recommendations.
Citywire Selection Updates
Latest updates on how the funds in Citywire Selection are investing
- Littlewood dodges Japan correction and bolsters gold shelter - 23/05/2013
- Liontrust Special Situations - 21/05/2013
- Henderson Global Technology - 21/05/2013
- Ecclesiastical Higher Income - 20/05/2013
- Standard Life Investments UK Equity Unconstrained - 16/05/2013
- CF Miton Special Situations - 16/05/2013
- First State Asia Pacific Leaders - 09/05/2013
- GLG Japan Core Alpha - 08/05/2013
- Threadneedle UK Equity Income - 08/05/2013
- Investec Emerging Markets Debt - 01/05/2013
- Aberdeen Asia Pacific - 26/04/2013
- Standard Life Investments GARS fund - 17/04/2013
- Murray International Trust - 16/04/2013
- Cazenove Multi-Manager Diversity - 15/04/2013
- Allianz Gilt Yield - 11/04/2013
- Jupiter Merlin Income Portfolio - 04/04/2013
- Schroder Income - 04/04/2013
- Investec Global Bond - 29/03/2013
- Fidelity Special Situations - 29/03/2013
- Cazenove European - 29/03/2013
Portions of the information contained in this factsheet were derived by Citywire Financial Publishers Ltd using content supplied by Lipper, a Reuters Company.