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May 09, 2012 at 08:40 PM
Apple has been big in the news lately and for lots of big reasons, not least of which is the spectacular run-up in its stock price. All of a sudden, it seemed, the world’s greatest tech company was worth more than half a trillion dollars, making it far and away the largest publicly traded company on the Street. The good news is many investors have knowingly benefitted, some tremendously so, from the stock’s rise. The bad news is probably just as many would be shocked to find how many shares of Apple they own in unexpected places in their portfolios.
Truth be known, a good number of mid- and small-cap strategies hold the biggest-cap stock on the planet, as do several dividend-focused strategies. Even BlackRock’s High Yield Bond Portfolio owned Apple ahead of the company’s recent announcement that it would begin paying dividends. What’s it matter as long as everyone’s making money? It matters a lot to advisors aiming to construct style-pure portfolios.
Understand the Nuances
In reality, most portfolio managers’ investment guidelines are far more flexible than the name of the product might suggest. Some mandates are actually vague enough that a manager can invest within any part of the market to pursue the stated objective. Equity managers, for example, often have almost unlimited room to play with market cap and style—sometimes even geography—as the market environment shifts. Good for the manager, maybe, but a nightmare for advisors trying to build a style pure portfolio for their clients.
Fortunately, good due diligence on a fund’s investment process will help you better understand how far the manager can invest beyond his or her stated limitations. For example, you might find that a manager is required to sell a holding when it exceeds the upper bounds of the portfolio’s defined market cap range. Others, you’ll find, have the freedom to continue to hold in that scenario, also known as “letting a winner run.” While this may benefit the manager’s performance (or not), it clearly can lead to unwanted overlap between the underlying managers in your client’s portfolio. Knowing the difference is crucial.
Dive Into the Data
When you’ve hired managers to represent specific asset classes, capitalizations, and styles, reviewing current and past holdings helps to prove or disprove their buy and sell disciplines. Holdings-based style analysis can be used to confirm the consistency of a strategy beyond the buy and sell disciplines described by the manager.
To that point, the PrimaGuide style concentration chart shown below depicts where a sample small-cap value equity strategy is currently invested (name withheld to protect the innocent).
As you would hope, this manager is primarily invested in the fund’s primary style box. A fair level of assets in core and growth hint that this manager may invest in a relative value style, while 25% of assets invested in mid cap (defined as $2 billion to $10 billion) indicate the manager has let winners run.
