Jacob Mitchell, Antipodes. Photo: Matt Fatches
Category: International equities – alternative strategies (long/short global, long/short regional, income overlay (options))
Winner: Antipodes Global Investment Partners
Analyst: Justin Tay
Sector overview:
With global equity markets having been largely driven by a number of macroeconomic shifts and exogenous events through the past 12 months, it has been a challenging year for active management. However, managers with superior bottom-up stock selection coupled with more flexible investment mandates have continued to generate strong excess returns.
Zenith says …
The Antipodes Global Fund provides investors with a concentrated, absolute return focused, long/short exposure to global equities. Antipodes’ investment team comprises 11 investment professionals, led by Jacob Mitchell, chief investment officer and portfolio manager. Mitchell was formerly deputy chief investment officer at Platinum Asset Management and possesses a strong performance track record for the variety of strategies where he held portfolio management responsibilities, including the Platinum International Fund and Platinum Japan Fund. Zenith has a high regard for Mitchell, considering him to be an experienced and high-quality investor, underpinning our overall level of conviction in the fund.
Interview
Jacob Mitchell
Chief investment officer and portfolio manager
Antipodes Global Investment Partners
We have a focus on finding differentiated opportunities in global equities. Our process really takes us, typically, into neglected parts of the market, and in a 12-month period when you’ve had a lot of macro uncertainty, it’s really been the crowded trades that have hurt investors. Our portfolio, by its very nature, is eclectic on the long side. We’re looking for 30 to 50 ideas and, within that portfolio, non-correlated outcomes; and then looking for shorts. We find the neglected parts of the market through a combination of qualitative understanding around global sectors and industries. In the team there’s more than 100 years of experience of investing globally. And we marry that with quantitative tools to identify traditional valuation-type metrics of neglect. But we don’t anchor to either – we use a combination of both.
Looking forward, we see generally, in a sector sense, there’s still quite large valuation dispersion, not just between traditionally cyclical versus defensive sectors, but also within sectors. There’s a lot more dispersion. That mean there are growing opportunities for stock pickers, but also downside risks. Our primary downside risk, we think, is just how crowded the credit trade is, and that has implications for equities. You can find protection from those downside risks through shorts … and we’re typically going after stocks without too much debt. And then on the long side, trying to avoid those obvious exposures.
