11th December 2009

Three Thames River Multi-Manager Funds link with Canada Life

Thames River Capital has linked three of its multi-manager funds with Canada Life for its life and pensions product range. The Funds, which are managed by Rob Burdett, Gary Potter and their team, are:

Thames River Global Boutiques - AAA rated by S&P and AA by OBSR
Thames River Cautious Managed - AA rated by both S&P and OBSR
Thames River Balanced Managed - AA rated by OBSR

The Thames River Multi-Manager funds celebrated their second anniversary on the 3rd of October and have had a record year of strong inflows recently averaging around £2m per day and with assets under management now totaling well over £300m. Since the launch in October 2007, the team has consistently produced first and second quartile performance across its onshore fund range, building on their impressive track record over the 13 years they have worked together.

Got to be in it to win it!

Following our comprehensive update to clients in October (Client Update issue No.4), we take the opportunity to pass on our latest thoughts. The extract below appeared in a recent New Model Adviser edition.

Equity markets have enjoyed a spectacular rally from the March lows but as the clocks go back and the dark nights lengthen, late October saw one of the strongest tests to the resilience of this bounce. Currency volatility also increased and gold hit new highs. As I write this in the second week of November shares are once again on the bounce but nerves have been jangled - why?

The turn around in sentiment to the negative came as generally positive economic data was greeted with caution - investors treated this news as a sign that policy stimulus is likely to be coming to an end. The US third quarter GDP was estimated to have increased at an annualised rate of 3.5%, beating estimates. Although this is an impressive headline number, two of the largest constituents (durable goods spending and residential investment) received significant boosts from government aid. This highlights the fragility of the recovery and the importance of end demand increasing.

For pointers to a more robust take on this we can look to the fixed income markets which appear to have heeded the data, rather than pontificating over the withdrawal of QE. For example in October fixed Interest markets were stronger with credit and in particular High Yield credit rising over the month. The IMA Sterling High Yield sector rose by just over 1%.

Given the speed at which the markets have recovered since the lows of March along with the way in which investors have reacted to news flow, markets are delicately poised at this point in time. On a micro level, earnings have by and large beaten (admittedly depressed) expectations. But investors are becoming very choosy and almost exclusively rewarding only those companies with positive sales growth, and selling down other stocks which had beaten expectations via cuts to costs, government subsidies and the like.

Click here to read full article