SLI GARS caught out by Asia outperformance in Q1

Fund flat over the quarter

The team managing the £25bn SLI Global Absolute Return Strategies (GARS) fund said outperformance in Asia negatively affected three of the portfolio's currency strategies over the first quarter of the year, leading them to close a number of positions.

Adam Rudd, investment director on the multi-asset investing team, said there were 11 positive contributors to the fund but ten positions were negative, leading to an overall negative return of 0.1% in the three months to 31 March 2017, according to the team. In an update to investors, Rudd said the three positions that cost the fund in performance terms were the long Japanese yen versus Korean won, long US dollar versus Singapore dollar, and long Norwegian krone versus Australian dollar strategies. All three cost the fund 0.2 percentage points each in performance. The currency pair tr...