It is earnings season in the United States and earnings can spark serious volatility in markets. The earnings season is the time when most publicly traded companies report quarterly or annual earnings…

All businesses must manage a range of input costs. Right now, these ingredients (from labour to raw materials and cost of capital) are costing a lot more…

An important part of Seed’s multi management process is performing monthly asset class valuations using our in-house quantitative models. This process covers all the local and global…

Market participants are increasingly getting worried about the possibility of “something breaking” within financial markets because of rising interest rates. Breaking in this case refers to a crisis which might result …

In my article last week, I asked you to imagine finding a crystal ball that would give you the names of the Top 5 performing funds over the next 2 decades. Armed with this information, how would you plot your investment course? Randomly choose one of the five funds, or continuously switch to the best […]

Imagine you found a mythical crystal ball 20 years ago that showed the Top 5 performing South African Multi Asset High Equity Funds over the next 2 decades (without showing their order). What would you do with the information? Would you (a) simply choose one of the funds in the knowledge that you will do […]

In only its second full year of existence, the Lindsell Train Investment Trust, invested some £180 000 to acquire 30 000 shares in Diageo plc – the UK spirits and beer company. Over the years they have strategically added to this position. In the 2003 annual financial statements, Lindsell Train’s original comment on their purchase […]

There are multiple ways for a fund’s performance to be presented and evaluated, one of the most commonly used methods are what we call trailing returns.Trailing returns measure how a fund has performed over a specific period. Most fund fact sheets show trailing returns measured on a 1-year, 3-year, 5-year and 10-year basis.

The current market environment is difficult to navigate, with investor sentiment negative. Investors are worried about several issues that have resulted in volatile markets and negative returns across asset classes. Issues range from elevated inflation, rising interest rates, possibility of a global recession and problematic geopolitics.

Decentralized technologies are still quite heavily reliant on centralized technologies, meaning that they are controlled by a natural person rather than peer-to-peer. Firstly, you cannot access crypto without fiat money like Rands or Dollars. You can access crypto by transferring fiat to a centralized exchange (CEX) and exchanging it for crypto.

From chatter across print media, social media and online in general, it seems the relationship between clients and the investment profession – firms, advisors, planners, et cetera – is facing challenges. What has been expressed in some social circles implies a diminishing level of trust by clients.

An important part of Seed’s multi management process is performing monthly asset class valuations using our in-house quantitative models. This process covers all the local and global asset classes that are suitable for inclusion in our multi asset class funds and model portfolios.

According to Google Trends, “What is inflation?”, is one of the phrases that has seen a significant increase in search interest across the world this year. With the topic of inflation dominating news headlines this is unsurprising.

Inflation is commonly defined as a measure of the rate of change in the price of goods and services in an economy. This definition, however, is looking at the effect and…

An important part of Seed’s multi management process is performing monthly asset class valuations using our in-house quantitative models. This process covers all the local and global asset classes that…

The last decade has seen significant growth in high-quality equity funds. The success of the United Kingdom’s largest retail fund, Fundsmith Equity (£24 billion fund size at the end of July 2022), is testament to this.

When a global fund manager with a compounded return of almost 24% p.a. over 5 years and 21% p.a. over the last 10 years to March 2022, comes under immense pressure in the last 6 months, it’s only natural that investors experience a loss of confidence.

Most investors – whether wealthy or poor, young or old – should allocate a component of their investment portfolio to a low-risk bucket. This low-risk bucket is there to cover a variety of needs.

For most of the 21st century SA government bonds haven’t compensated investors adequately by way of yield pick-up when compared to 3-month cash rates. When you invest into a 10-year bond you essentially lock in rates for 10 years…

Local bonds are an interesting asset class that, for a long time, were unappreciated – and rightly so. But this has all changed. This week I’ll first give the basics of what bonds are and how they work for investors, and next week will take a closer look at current market dynamics for SA government […]

This is fund manager Nick Train’s simple tip for successful investing because it is strategically advantageous to think positively about stock investments long term. Almost 30 years on from…

Last week, the Seed Investments Team hosted a joint-Advisor session featuring the managers of the two main equity building blocks within the Seed Balanced Fund – Visio and Fairtree. As at end of January, 23.5% of the Seed Balanced fund was allocated to Fairtree Equity and 20% to Visio.

The “January effect” hypothesizes that the stock market tends to rise in January more than other months. This was first observed by Sidney Wachtel an investment banker in 1942. Having held for some time, more recent data particularly in the last 20 years, shows the effect being less pronounced.

The Seed Global Fund celebrated its 5th anniversary in December 2021. Over this period, it has comfortably delivered top quartile performance. Global investing should be an important part of…

Seed’s Multi Manager process, which offers diversification across fund managers, asset classes and investment styles, incorporates a wide range of ideas from the best managers in the industry.

South Africa’s savings rate has recently jumped up from 14.2% in December 2020 to 18.0% in the first quarter of this year, but remains very low compared to the global average of around 25.0%…

Over the last 25 years, the typical local balanced fund, as represented by the ASISA SA Multi Asset High Equity category average, has produced significant inflation-beating returns. However, as most of us know, this performance did not all come in a straight line.

The constant barrage of negative news adds to information complexity when looking at investments. It is hard to not be pessimistic about the financial situation given the kind of headlines we are exposed to daily. Morgan Housel wrote about the seductive power of pessimism …

The Seed Lifestage Employee Benefits offering is a comprehensive solution that enables participating employers to provide their employees with an optimal, risk-appropriate and diversified retirement fund that is managed on a continuous basis.

A key part of the investment process at Seed Investments is determining which asset classes we should overweight (relative to a Strategic Asset Allocation – SAA) and which should be underweight. The process has evolved over the past decade …