Can you give a brief overview of your strategy in terms of what you are trying to achieve for investors, your investment process and the make-up of the investment team?
The META fund aims to provide diversified exposure to distinct thematic investment universes that have the potential to grow at a rate superior to that of the broader global economy, due to the long-term secular growth drivers that underpin them. AI & Robotics, Safety, Water and Subscription Economy are all ‘themes' that are rapidly becoming more prevalent in every aspect of our daily lives. These themes are supported by primary forces such as demographic evolution, innovation, globalization and resource scarcity and present investors with persistent above average long-term growth that is under-priced by the equity market. Our time horizon is therefore long-term by design. The fund managers invest in each single thematic strategy at equal weight and rebalance the portfolio on a monthly basis. This allows for a consistently diversified portfolio that demonstrates little overlap between the individual themes therefore offering attractive diversification benefits. In summary META provides access to a multi-thematic portfolio that aims to provide investors with attractive growth prospects while demonstrating resiliency across a range of market scenarios.
How have you been trying to weather the storm caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and what could be the longer-term implications for your strategy?
While 2020 was quite unique both on the financial and economic front, new businesses emerged at an unprecedented pace with accelerating changes in societal behaviour. Our META fund is, by design, aimed at harnessing those secular opportunities and demonstrated resiliency over 2020. Megatrends derived from the evergreen root causes of societal shifts that are shaping the way that we live - namely global Demographic Change, Technological Advances, Globalization and Resource Scarcity are at the foundation of our approach. As such Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Safety, Water and the Subscription Economy are all themes that are rapidly becoming more prevalent in every aspect of our lives. As governments, corporations and individuals have witnessed first-hand the merits of functioning, interacting and consuming differently it is highly unlikely that as a society we backtrack in light of secular changes that have taken place.
Can you identify a couple of key investment opportunities for your fund you are playing at the moment in the portfolio? This could be at a stock, sector or thematic level.
Clearly the growth of machine learning algorithms and automation, which are redefining manufacturing processes, data processing and activities as diverse as remote surgery to the design of your next house is leading to significant investment opportunities as artificial intelligence and robotics become more prevalent in our everyday lives. We consider digital safety to also represent a compelling case with the dramatic increase in the number of connected devices in the world that has created an ever-expanding surface area for hackers to exploit, at the government, industry and individual level. With Covid-19 having confined most of us to working-from-home for a prolonged period over the spring and summer, our new-found reliance on new services such as on-line educational tools, entertainment services and connected fitness was laid-bare, with the emergence of the investment opportunity around the subscription economy. Finally, we view water as a durable investment theme that represents a mission critical input for hardware manufacturing processes with broad applications ranging from chip production, to datacentre controlling through to operating core infrastructure
