INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE REWARDED

Welcome to the first magazine of 2023 in its new free digital format. While we have pared it down by about a third, from 76 to about 50 pages, we aim to retain the quality of content, which, as always, has been on managing your money and growing your wealth. And we’re retaining the useful unit trust performance and tax data in the Databank at the back.

This edition of the magazine is almost entirely devoted to the recent Raging Bull Awards, which rewarded unit trust performance to the end of 2022. The eight trophy-winning funds are profiled in the form of interviews with the fund managers, who give insights into the investment processes they employ and their views on the markets going forward.

While the volatile markets in 2022 had a negative effect overall on investment performance, some fund managers came through with flying colours. Lucky perhaps, but the riskadjusted awards, determined through the PlexCrown Fund Rating methodology (see Databank for details), rate performance over periods up to five years. These awards are a truer indicator of a manager’s consistency and skill.

Congratulations to SA Manager of the Year, PSG Asset Management, which stuck to its convictions during tough times and is now reaping the rewards (and awards). Congrats too to Offshore Manager of the Year, Credo, a London-based investment firm founded by South Africans, which has offices in South Africa.

The magazine isn’t solely about the Raging Bulls. I explore a claim by financial planner Wynand Gouws, backed by thorough calculations, that retirement funds may not be an ideal vehicle to use when saving for retirement because the post-retirement tax consequences can outweigh the pre-retirement tax breaks. And we profile the Financial Planning Institute’s Financial Planner of the Year for 2022/23, the delightful and accomplished Palesa Dube.

Martin Hesse