Articles tagged as "equities"
50 years of investing in an evolving ecosystem
The asset management industry plays a key role in society, channelling capital from savers to where it is needed in the real economy, and in so doing, creati...
Three golden rules for achieving long-term, real investment returns
Whether you are accumulating capital for retirement, school or university expenses for your children or simply trying to ensure that you have money saved for...
Are low-equity funds relevant in today’s investment universe?
Low-equity unit trusts provide cautious protection against a falling market. Martine Damonse, investment specialist in the ManCo Distribution team, discusses...
Investment update: How to invest in a changing world
At Allan Gray we are bottom-up investors, but we want to be on the right side of long-term trends, particularly at secular turning points. During the recent...
How to invest in an inflationary, energy-short and increasingly divided world
At Allan Gray, we are bottom-up investors, but we want to be on the right side of long-term trends, particularly at secular turning points. One way is to...
How to invest to be crisis ready
COVID-19 has driven home an important life lesson: Expect (and plan for) the unexpected. When it comes to your finances, this means balancing the need to hav...
Interrogating the opportunity in South Africa
Market dislocations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have presented attractive opportunities for investors. The JSE is a good case in point. Presenting...
Preparing for more uncertainty and volatility
A look back over the last two years reveals how difficult forecasting is. Even with perfect foresight of the pandemic context, one would not have been able t...
Orbis: Taming turbulence
Turbulence. It’s a word that can strike fear into the heart of even the most seasoned air traveller and even a little of it has been known to put people off...
Market update: Weighing up opportunity and risk in the face of volatility
While the local market has been strong, South African assets still look cheap overall compared to many of their global counterparts. There is opportunity in...
Investment update: Is it time to reduce SA share exposure?
The FTSE/JSE All Share Index (ALSI) is now significantly higher than it was before the pandemic – 21% up from the start of 2020. Is this a sign that it is ti...
Woolworths: Not so down under
Most of you will be more than familiar with the fashion, beauty, home and food offering of retailer Woolworths, affectionately referred to as Woolies, and on...
Orbis: The great imbalance
At its heart investing is a balancing act. Balancing how much you stand to gain if things go well, with how much you could lose if things don't work out. Now...
Allan Gray Stable Fund turns 20
Over the last two decades, the Allan Gray Stable Fund has built a solid track record through dynamic asset allocation, bottom-up stock-picking and mindful ri...
Part 4: How to invest to be crisis ready
COVID-19 has driven home an important life lesson: Expect (and plan for) the unexpected. When it comes to your finances, this means balancing the need to hav...
Q&A with Allan Gray and Orbis: Investing beyond COVID-19
While financial market volatility as a result of COVID-19 is expected to continue over the short term, the investment teams at Allan Gray and Orbis are focus...
Investing during lockdown and beyond
Sometimes in investing, the best thing to do is nothing. In a presentation to advisers and clients via Zoom webinar, Duncan Artus examined the levels and...
Perspectives and portfolio positioning amid COVID-19
The world as we know it has changed dramatically over the last two months, with the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown strategies causing extreme volatility on t...
Orbis: Turn away from the noise and look to the long term
Much has been written about the emotional cycle of fear and greed in investing. Both panic and excessive optimism can create extraordinary opportunities for...
Positioning our portfolios for growth beyond COVID-19
The speed at which the financial market swings from despair to elation is astounding. The past few months have seen no shortage of mood swings as investors...
Orbis: Performance and positioning during COVID-19
There has been little else to talk about as COVID-19 dominates world headlines. Globally, everyone is trying to evaluate the real impact the pandemic will ha...
COVID-19: Looking to history to understand potential outcomes
With much of the world in lockdown, one wonders whether it is appropriate to draw on past analogies in thinking about what lies ahead. However, every prior...
COVID-19: Q&A with Allan Gray portfolio managers
With many countries in lockdown, uncertainty prevails. Against this backdrop, many clients are asking for our views on the economic impact, an update on our...
COVID-19: Evaluating market risk versus opportunity
We have managed our portfolios through a range of different crises since 1974. Over the last 20 years, the dotcom collapse in 2001/02, the global financial...
Coronavirus: Taking stock of the state of the markets
The world is changing extremely fast. The global business shutdown is unlike anything seen outside wartime. It is impossible to know the length or depth of t...
How to invest in challenging times
A braai over the weekend inevitably reminds us of the significant challenges our country faces – there is lots of negative news to talk about.
Reflecting on our top equity holdings
The performance of the Allan Gray Equity, Balanced and Stable funds has been disappointing over the past couple of years. Low single-digit returns from...
Q&A: Understanding Orbis’ performance and potential
Market breadth has been very narrow offshore, with few winners and many losers. Among the losers have been emerging markets and select cyclicals. At the same...
Broadened horizons, local learnings
Leonard Krüger and Nick Ndiritu look at how we have tailored our investment philosophy and process to invest in Frontier Africa markets. They discuss lessons...
South African investors need to fall out of love with equities
South Africa’s equity market capitalisation equates to more than 200% of the country’s GDP, the highest proportion in the world and a level that is simply no...
Valuations matter
Uncertainty abounds at present. Equity returns for the past few years have been underwhelming, political upheaval locally and internationally is causing wave...
Balanced Fund update: An improved opportunity set
The poor sentiment towards equity markets at the end of 2018 reversed sharply in the first quarter of 2019, with the JSE appreciating 8% and the MSCI World...
Orbis: Hunting for value
Buying cheap stocks and selling them for a profit sounds like a reasonable way to make money. But there’s a bit more to it when it comes to the way we invest...
The dash for cash
The end of the calendar year often leads to reflection on how one’s investments have performed. Many savers are questioning the wisdom of investing in South...
Steinhoff class action
Allan Gray, along with other South African institutions, is participating in a class action case being run in the Netherlands by Dutch law firm BarentsKrans ...
How to spot investment red flags
South Africa has been rocked by a series of corporate scandals in recent years that have sent the share prices of former blue-chip companies like Steinhoff a...
Invest in stocks with dividends, but put stop losses in place
It is always a good time to invest, the question is where...
Valuation of Nigerian and Zimbabwean holdings in the Allan Gray Africa ex-SA Equity Fund
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has established a new foreign exchange (FX) platform for investors and exporters, effective 24 April 2017. The exchange...
Tough times for African equities
Most African equity markets had a difficult 2016, generating negative dollar returns. The worst performers were Egypt and Nigeria, which fell 47% and 41%...
An investment case for Life Healthcare
Recent news about private hospital operator Life Healthcare’s international investments has created negative sentiment about the company’s ability to allocat...
Global perspective: Do value shares deserve to be this cheap?
The Orbis Global Balanced Fund aims to balance capital appreciation and income generation with the associated risk of its investments. These objectives...
What to focus on when choosing shares and other assets
How do you distinguish a good investment from a lemon? And how do you create a well-diversified portfolio? Listen to this 15-minute interview on PowerFM...
Annual report from the outgoing Chief Investment Officer
Adapted from the Chief Investment Officer’s comments, which will appear in the Allan Gray Unit Trust Annual Report, 2015. These are Ian Liddle’s final Annual...
Contrarian investing and different performance
The valuation-based approach to investing used by Allan Gray and our offshore partner Orbis is often contrarian since the shares that are most attractively...
Valuation dispersion and opportunities to beat the market in Australia
Cyclicality and dispersion in valuations can create great opportunities to buy shares at very attractive prices in companies that are out of favour with the...
SA mining and the sunk cost fallacy
Ian Liddle discusses why the challenges in South African mining provide an interesting case study of the 'sunk cost fallacy', a behavioural bias that sees us...
A tale of two crises
Greece and China have dominated financial headlines since March. With fear running high, we try to remain focused on the relationship between the price and...
What is a PE ratio?
Central to our investment philosophy at Allan Gray is buying shares that the market has priced below what we believe they are worth. We then sell these share...
The upside to downside protection
Warren Buffet famously said that there are two rules when investing, 'Rule No.1: Never lose money, Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.' Shaun Duddy discusses...
Manufacturing in meltdown
The manufacturing sector is currently in a woeful state. Simon Raubenheimer discusses why we are where we are. 'The Board of Directors has taken the decision...
The sentiment pendulum
Investor sentiment is a delicate thing, which changes with surprising rapidity. Kenyan banks… Three years ago Kenya and the Kenyan banks were very out of...
What do low global bond yields mean for South African investors?
Adapted from the Chief Investment Officer’s comments, which will appear in the Allan Gray Unit Trust Annual Report, 2014. More than half of global government...
Building confidence in construction
'Success in investing is not a question of what you buy, it is a question of what you pay.' Howard Marks Buying above-average companies at average or hopeful...
Changing the odds
Sun International, South Africa's second largest casino and resort operator, is undergoing significant change after a number of years of underperformance....
How to ensure your retirement income goes the distance
It is only a number of years into retirement that the consequences of decisions made early on begin to show. If you are nearing retirement , or you are in...
Astral Foods: Unappreciated Quality
Good quality companies at decent prices are hard to come by these days on the local market. Leonard Krüger explains the investment case for Astral Foods.
Diamonds in the rough
Small- and mid-cap companies make up 16% of the FTSE/JSE All Share Index, but 25-30% of our clients' South African equity holdings. Although many of these...
Time to review your equity exposure?
Adapted from the Chief Investment Officer’s comments, which will appear in the Allan Gray Unit Trust Annual Report, 2013. We aim to grow our clients’ wealth...
Gold and platinum mines: 'Eating sardines' or 'trading sardines'?
"There is the old story about the market craze in sardine trading when the sardines disappeared from their traditional waters in Monterey, California. The...
A simple checklist for domestic asset allocation
I recently read the fascinating book ‘The Success Equation: Untangling luck in Business, Sports and Investing’1, which explores, how much of one’s success or...
Message from our Top 10 equity holdings
Investors frequently ask us whether or not our choice of shares reveals a particular theme or ‘story’. Investors are also curious as to how we alter our...
Investing: a history of bubbles
'Invest in stocks? Forget about it.' - USA Today headline, 8 May 2012. As contrarian investors, we cannot help but take notice when one of the most widely re...
