Fund Talk - Indian Magic
worldlyinvestor.com Fund Talk
A Top-Down Strategy With Top Returns
By Brad Durham, Special to worldlyinvestor.com
Here's a fund that has beaten the crowd by using an unconventional top-down strategy.
Many emerging-market equity funds embrace global indexes that are set by market capitalization in deciding on how to allocate their funds among countries. They attempt to beat their benchmarks by tinkering slightly with the weightings.
But it's a whole different and courageous couple of funds that scrap the indexes altogether and attempt to find their own way to the performance grail.
One such fund is the Federated Emerging Markets Fund (Nasdaq:EMMAX - news), managed by Federated Investors. The fund has been guided by Chris Matyszewski since the departure of former fund manager Jolanta Wysocka in mid-1999.
The claim appears to be backed up by the fund's performance. The Federated Emerging Markets Fund was up 79.1% in 1999, compared to a 61% gain by the MSCI EMF Index. The fund's annual average return over three years is 5.2%, placing it in the top third of its fund group.
The end result of its unorthodox style are heavy country weightings in select markets, including 12% in India, 11% in Taiwan and an 8.5% allocation to Turkey, while assigning anemic weightings of 7% to Mexico and Korea, large-cap markets that merit 11.5% and 15%, respectively, in the index.
India is Matyszewski's biggest bet, considering the country's 3% weighting in the indexes. ``The coalition government looks like it will hold,' says the portfolio manager. ``India stocks have performed well and our India weighting has run up beyond 10% of the portfolio. We think the market will continue to be a strong performer unless there is a huge correction in the Nasdaq.'
Fund managers have recently noted increasing correlation between the technology stock-laden Indian market with the Nasdaq. And with the Indian market up a healthy 12.6% year to date, last week's sell-off on the Nasdaq, capped by a 3.7% decline on January 28, could spell trouble for Indian equities.
The fund's top stock pick in India is Escorts, a manufacturer of tractors and motorcycles. Its favorite sector is software, based on impressive export growth, and its biggest holding in this sector is a 1.5% allocation to Satyam Infoway (Nasdaq:SIFY - news).
Matyszewski also likes ``the frenzied media stocks' in India and has put 1.5% in Sriadhihakari, which produces film for a government television channel and has recently expanded into broadcasting.
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