FMG Rising 6 Fund lost 2.7% in the 1st Quarter

Like all other Emerging Market Funds, the first quarter of 2016 was a very tough and volatile quarter for the Rising 6 Fund. None of the six regions the Fund is invested in was spared the sheer rout and volatility that we saw in January. The bears stormed out of the gates in just the first week of January, with the China A Share market down a mind-boggling 15% in the first 5 calendar days of the year. Thankfully, we entered the year with approximately 20% of cash, which cushioned the fall in prices. February and March was a different story altogether – having so much cash to re-deploy, the challenge was to identify which would be the outperforming markets. In hindsight, we probably were a bit too overtly optimistic on the recovery of China following the January rout and over weighted China too much. As green shoots of economic data are finally seeping in (PMI – 50.2, last reading above 50 was in June ‘15), we were expecting a stronger recovery in Shanghai markets. We were wrong. However, we think China will be an outperformer in the coming quarter as prices have been so depressed and China has simply not been part of the rally seen in March. We made 2 great calls in Q1 – the first being to overweight Russia when the rally kicked off. We believed that there would be a bounce back in the Russian markets, driven by what was a dramatic recovery of oil prices. The second call we made was opening a 10% position in Brazil. Despite not catching the full upside, added quite a few basis points to the Fund’s performance, taking advantage of what has been the leading global market in 2016 so far. With just 10% in cash (following a 35% high in January), we believe we are well cushioned against any market downturn and are in a good position to continue profiting from market recovery. Source: Bloomberg