Australian equities long short manager, Sage Capital has had its highly successful active extension long short strategy, Sage Capital Equity Plus Fund added to Colonial First State’s FirstChoice platform − broadening access to the strategy.

As an active extension long short strategy, Sage Capital Equity Plus Fund is specifically designed as an Australian equities allocation targeting a constant beta of one and benchmarked to the S&P/ASX200 Accumulation Index. For the three years to 30 November 2022, the fund had returned 12.40% pa^ net of fees versus the S&P/ASX200 Accumulation Index return of 5.93% pa, an outperformance of 6.47% pa^ net of fees.

Having achieved its three-year track record in August 2022, Sage Capital has been able to build a broad and diversified base of both domestic and high profile international clients across institutional, not-for-profit and charities, endowment, family office, private bank, retail and wholesale sectors via its partner, Channel Capital. Sage Capital intentionally provides investors with two style neutral portfolio solutions including an alternatives solution (Sage Capital Absolute Return Fund), and an Australian equity solution (Sage Capital Equity Plus Fund), both of which rely on the same investment process built over 20 years by Chief Investment Officer, Sean Fenton, through his successful career as a long short investor.  

Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer, Sean Fenton said, “Considering the increase in market volatility over the past year, the fund has performed well − achieved by applying our broad and style neutral investment process. We categorise the market into eight proprietary Sage groups and focus on selecting stocks within them, to give us the flexibility to incorporate rapidly shifting company information into the portfolio without taking large binary style positions. Performance has been driven by strong stock selection within these Sage groups which include Defensives, Domestic Cyclicals, Global Cyclicals, Gold, Growth, REITs, Resources and Yield,” Mr Fenton said.

Sage Capital’s market neutral strategy, Sage Capital Absolute Return Fund had returned +11.54% pa^ net of fees over three years to 30 November 2022, outperforming its benchmark (RBA Cash Rate) by 11.10% pa. This has been achieved with no correlation to the S&P/ASX200 Accumulation Index and with less than half of the volatility, thus providing investors with clear portfolio diversification benefits by reducing volatility and drawdowns, and providing better risk-adjusted returns.

Sage Capital was recently awarded winner for Australian Equities at the 2022 HFM AsiaHedge Awards and Best Emerging Manager at the 2022 Hedge Funds Rock + Australian Alternative Investment awards.

^Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

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