Our mandate is unconstrained in terms of asset class and geography.

Our fund has held long and short positions across equities, currencies, fixed income instruments and commodities in many parts of the world. For large parts of its history, the fund has employed leverage. No choice of a single benchmark can therefore reflect the behavior of our investable universe. Put simply, our fund isn’t a JSE long-only equities fund that aims to beat the broader market and reward shareholders for choosing active over passive management.

We chose a benchmark which we believe reflects a familiar and viable alternative for South African investors who venture beyond cash, bonds and properties when they invest. Over time, investors have received the highest returns from being invested in equity markets. South Africa is no exception.

We therefore believe that the return of the JSE All Share Total Return Index should provide a fair yardstick for our investors to use in assessing whether we have done a good job. The actual composition of the JSE All Share Index has absolutely no bearing on how our portfolio is constructed, nor does it have any influence on our thinking when we make our decisions of which investments to pursue in the fund.

Having said that, the fund is predominantly South African exposure, given our familiarity with this market, with offshore exposure added where we see attractive opportunities.

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