Raging Bull Award winners

TOP MANAGEMENT COMPANIES OF 2011

DOMESTIC MANAGEMENT COMPANY OF THE YEAR. The South African-domiciled management company with the best overall performance across sectors consisting of a suite of five or more rand-denominated funds with at least three years’ history. ALLAN GRAY

Certificate for Second-best Company: NEDGROUP INVESTMENTS

Certificate for Third-best Company: CORONATION

OFFSHORE MANAGEMENT COMPANY OF THE YEAR. The overseas-domiciled management company with the best overall performance across sectors consisting of a suite of five or more non-rand-denominated funds with at least three years’ history. INVESTEC

TOP OUTRIGHT PERFORMERS

Best Broad-based Domestic Equity Fund. The fund with the highest ProfileData total investment return ranking over three years in the Association for Savings & Investment SA (Asisa) domestic equity general, value and growth sectors. PSG EQUITY FUND

Best Domestic Fixed-Interest Fund. The fund with the highest ProfileData total investment return ranking over three years in the Asisa domestic fixed-interest bond and income sectors. ALLAN GRAY BOND FUND

Best Foreign (South African-domiciled) Equity Fund. The fund with the highest ProfileData total investment return ranking over three years in the Asisa foreign equity general sector. SIM GLOBAL BEST IDEAS FEEDER FUND (A)

Best Offshore Global Equity Fund. The fund with the highest ProfileData total investment return ranking over three years in ProfileData’s offshore global equity general sector. CORONATION GLOBAL EMERGING MARKETS FUND

TOP PERFORMERS ON A RISK-ADJUSTED BASIS

Best Domestic Asset Allocation Flexible Fund. The fund with the highest PlexCrown rating over five years in the Asisa domestic asset allocation flexible sector. PSG FLEXIBLE FUND

Best Domestic Asset Allocation Prudential Fund. The fund with the highest PlexCrown rating over five years in the Asisa domestic asset allocation prudential high equity, medium equity, low equity and variable equity sectors. OLD MUTUAL REAL INCOME FUND

Best Domestic General Equity Fund. The fund with the highest PlexCrown rating over five years in the Asisa domestic equity general sector. AYLETT EQUITY FUND

Best Offshore Global Asset Allocation Fund. The fund with the highest PlexCrown rating in ProfileData’s offshore global asset allocation flexible and prudential sectors. INVESTEC GSF GLOBAL STRATEGIC MANAGED FUND (A)

HOW THE RAGING BULL AWARDS ARE DETERMINED

The Raging Bull Awards recognise the top performers on both outright performance and risk-adjusted performance.

The top funds on outright performance over three years in most domestic, rand-denominated foreign and offshore unit trust sub-categories receive a certificate, and Raging Bull Awards are made in the sub-categories or sectors that attract the most funds.

Other certificates and Raging Bull Awards – particularly for the asset allocation funds and the more popular sub-categories – are awarded on the basis of risk-adjusted returns over five years, as measured by PlexCrown Fund Ratings. Risk management is a major factor in determining a fund’s success.

To qualify for a Raging Bull Award or a certificate, or for the PlexCrown ratings, a fund must:

* Be open to retail investors.

* In the case of an award made on the basis of straight performance, be in a domestic unit trust sub-category (including South African-domiciled foreign funds) that has at least five actively managed funds with histories of three years or more.

* In the case of an award made to a foreign-domiciled (non-rand-denominated) fund on the basis of straight performance, be in a sub-category that has at least six actively managed funds with histories of three years or more.

* In the case of an award made on the basis of risk-adjusted returns, be in a major asset allocation sub-category, or in one of the other larger sub-categories. Sub-categories that have at least five actively managed funds with histories of five years or more are included in the awards.

* Not be a passive or index-tracker fund.

* Not be a money market fund.

* Not be a Fundisa fund.

* Not be in a varied specialist sub-category or in the domestic asset allocation targeted absolute and real return sub-category where mandates differ widely.

* Not have changed sub-categories during the past year.

* In the case of offshore funds, have been registered with the Financial Services Board for at least a year.

Our yearly model share portfolio for 2012

This year we continue to include more foreign companies in our portfolio, at the expense of the South African companies. The JSE market capitalisation only accounts for 1% of the world stock exchange market capitalisation, and we are finding more opportunities offshore.

The shares in our portfolio are as follows: (The share price is in ZAR, in cents)

Name	Weigting	Share price
Anglo	10%	29600
Apple	8%	327645
BHP Billiton	10%	23430
Ellies	5%	221
Exxaro	10%	16800
Google	8%	522533.1
HTC	8%	13265.715
Samsung	10%	737843.2
South Ocean	5%	140
Total	10%	41389.285
TPK	8%	10529.828
WBHO	8%	10519

Why Telkom is Eishkom

Two days ago I asked my PA to contact Telkom to cancel my residential ADSL service. After holding on for more than one hour, she eventually spoke to a consultant and transferred the call to me.

This is after I held on for more than half an hour to try to get to a consultant for the same purpose.

No wonder many customers complain about Telkom, about their poor service.

From an investment perspective, how can investors have confidence in a company that provides poor customer service?

SA Stockbrokers Comparisons

Below is a chart of stockbrokers' comparisons I have compiled. Note that the list of stockbrokers is not exhaustive, and my comparison focuses more on fees and products. It is not comprehensive in any way.

Standard Bank Online Share Trading probably offers the best comprehensive services for investors and traders.

Sell in May and go away

There is an old market adage of "Sell in May and go away". There is statistical evidence backing this, see the following two articles:

Sell in May and go away : Obstacle or opportunity?

A Google search on "Sell in May" revealed an astounding 1,450 million items. If you add 2011 to the search phrase the number of items dropped slightly to 957 million. A similar search on "Buy Low, Sell High" revealed only 172 million items. No search on other legendary axioms could come close to the number of items revealed by the search on "Sell in May".


This popular phrase is based on long-term statistics indicating that the best time to be invested in equities is the six months from early November through to the end of April of the next year - "good" periods, while the "bad" periods normally occur over the six months from May to October.

Sell-in-may-and-go-away-stock-strategists-not-so-sure

Anyone who’s been investing for a while has probably heard the homily “Sell in May and go away.” It’s a lilting reminder that the worst time of the year for stocks is usually the summer and the early fall. Going back decades, most of the money made in the stock market is made from November through April.


Some reasons behind this theory: People tend to feed their retirement accounts and invest bonuses early in the year. They go on vacation and ignore the market over the summer. Traders come back in September and dump companies that aren’t performing according to expectations.

Jeffrey Hirsch, publisher of the Stock Trader’s Almanac, offers some pretty persuasive numbers to support the argument. If you put $10,000 into the market on November 1, 1972, and spent 37 years selling all of your holdings on April 30 and rebuying on November 1, you’d have more than $160,000 today. You would have earned an average annual return of 7.4 percent, according to Hirsch’s data. If you’d taken that same $10,000 and, starting in 1972, done the reverse, investing every May 1 and selling every October 31, you’d have $7,863 and an average annual return of 0.4 percent.

****
It looks like this year is going to prove this old adage true again, with the Wall Street heading for the seventh straight down week, and our own JSE having losing steam over the past two months. But then this presents a better buying opportunities for investors in the next few months to come.

Sasol looks ominous

The recent chart Sasol looks like Sasol share price is on a slippery slope down. The 3-year chart first. It shows that after it has broken out of a symmetrical triangle, it has reached the target.

But the recent chart looks like a head and shoulders pattern forming. If it does break down the support at R350, it can go down to R310.

I would say cash is king!

The future of the Rand

The Rand has been trading sideways against the US Dollar since August 2010, between 7.30 and 6.50. It looks like the Rand is unlikely to break the R6.50 mark, and can trade in this range for some time.