Not many fund managers can claim to have led Australia to a World Cup soccer final. But Benjamin Leung almost went all the way in Japan 2002 when the Socceroos were defeated in the Robot World Cup.
“We have a view on everything, and it’s really hard to find the people to do it, and then to be able to galvanise all that information into something that can actually be used to build a portfolio,” Thompson explains. “On the smaller end of the scale, this force is much more dominant, which suggests to us that there is a bigger impact from less sophisticated retail investors,” he says.What is unusual about the last two years, Leung points out, is that the Australian sharemarket indices have been relatively stable. The index itself hasn’t had many additions, deletions or reconstitutions.
The solution is “elegant” says Leung, and involves finding stocks that have similar characteristics to high carbon-emitting ones. They could be companies exposed to rising inflation, that tend to display high momentum or relate to the performance of certain geographies.“The systematic process will be able to go ‘well, if you’re underweight a certain carbon-intense name, what other names can we insert ?’” says Leung.is a big talking point among investors.
“There is probably more value-added or greater opportunity in assembling the data source as opposed to the silver bullet of a super signal that’s going to find the best-performing stock every time,” he says.