Kenanga Investors wins Best Equity Group Award
KUCHING: Kenanga Investors Berhad ( Kenanga Investors) walked away from The Malaysia Lipper Fund Awards 2017 a proud winner of the Best Equity Group ( Islamic) recently.
Award winners are determined based on the lowest average decile rank of three years’ consistent return measure of the eligible funds per asset class and group.
The strong outperformance of Kenanga Investors’ funds can be credited to the fund house’s long term investment philosophy of “bottom-up stock picking” approach which focuses on offbenchmark bets which are often under-researched investment opportunities overlooked by other index trackers.
According to the fund house, there was no significant rebalancing exercise to the funds throughout 2016 in accordance to their stock-picking strategy.
“We saw the volatility that 2016 brought us as a source of opportunity to invest in mispriced assets. We further capitalised on this by adopting a slightly more flexible and wider range of asset allocation targets to take advantage of the short-term volatility,” said Ismitz Matthew De Alwis, executive director and chief executive officer of Kenanga Investors.
“We relied on our strong research capabilities to weather through the downturns and our internal governance policies to manage risk levels.”
On plans to introduce new Islamic products and services, he said, “We want to work closely with industry partners to offer more Shariah- compliant investment alternatives in line with the Islamic fund and wealth management blueprint launched early this year.
“There is more interest in this now due to efforts from the government in building a sustainable Islamic finance framework. Investors are also getting a better grasp f Islamic finance which is another contributing factor.”
For 2017, he advised investors to consider a balanced and diversified approach which can include foreign exposure to act as a safety net against possible down cycles experienced by the local market while cashing in on performances of foreign funds.
“With some recovery signs in the global economy at the beginning of 2017, we will favour sectors such as construction and infrastructure,” said De Alwis.
He also added that a cyclical rebound on commodity prices and the asset reflation theme will place the oil and gas sectors favourably in 2017.