Asset Allocation & Fund Positioning, Copley Fund Research

Steven Holden

Steven Holden is the CEO and Founder of Copley Fund Research, an independent provider of research on equity fund positioning and performance.  Set up in 2014, Copley focuses on global, global emerging market, US, Asia Ex-Japan and China active equity funds, covering over $4tr in assets across 1300 active managers.  The company provides data and analysis on market trends, manager exposures and active fund performance to an audience of investment managers, pension funds and fund selectors worldwide.  Mr Holden’s 14-year investment banking career started in 2000, where he worked for Morgan Stanley as an equity derivative trader focused on emerging markets in London.  Following this, he spent 4 years at Citibank in London and Hong Kong as an Executive Director in derivative sales, focused again on emerging markets.

Asset Allocation & Fund Positioning

Nio Quarterly Results – Is the Good News Priced In?

Copley Fund Research

Copley Fund Research provide research and data on asset allocation among Global and Emerging Market equity funds.  The analysis details absolute and relative positioning across countries, sectors and industries together with highly granular data on single stock and single fund allocations.  The data is updated monthly with time series going back to January 2011.

Global Research - Analysis of 165 prominent Global equity funds, combined AUM $335bn
GEM Research - Analysis of 127 prominent global EM equity funds, combined AUM $250bn

Asset Allocation - Global and GEM Equity

Cross Asset Strategy

Multiple Countries / Cross Asset Strategy

<div>
<p>Not all of the stocks in the benchmark MSCI Asia Ex-Japan index are well liked by active fund managers in the region.  In fact, there a large number of stocks that are avoided by the majority of funds.  In this analysis, we screen for these unloved stocks.</p>
<p>We filter our aggregated stock holdings data across the Asia Ex-Japan region as follows:</p>
</div><div><ol>
<li>Average Active Fund Weight &lt; I Shares MSCI Asia Ex-Japan<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/ishares-msci-cntry-asa-jpn-idx-fnd-etf" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:416:1" rel="noopener"></a> ETF Weight (i.e net underweight)</li>
<li>Percentage of Funds Invested &lt; 2% (i.e less than 2% of funds hold each stock).</li>
</ol></div><div>
<p>The list is headed by <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/nio-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:27399:1" rel="noopener">NIO Inc (NIO US)</a> , a stock owned by just 1% of active Asia Ex-Japan funds at a net underweight of -0.54%.  In total, 577 out of the 1086 stocks in the benchmark meet this criteria.</p>
<p>Does it pay to avoid unloved stocks?  We have backtested a portfolio of Asia Ex-Japan Unloved stocks based on the screening criteria above, rebalanced monthly going back to 2011 and capped at 50 stocks. The performance suggests that Unloved stocks are best avoided, with consistent underperformance vs the I-Shares Asia Ex-Japan ETF since 2011. </p>
<p><em>The analysis uses our Asia Ex-Japan fund data, comprising 97 active long-only Asia Ex-Japan funds with a combined AUM of $70bn.</em></p>
</div>


Not all of the stocks in the benchmark MSCI Asia Ex-Japan index are well liked by active fund managers in the region.  In fact, there a large number of stocks that are avoided by the majority of funds.  In this analysis, we screen for these unloved stocks.
We filter our aggregated stock holdings data across the Asia Ex-Japan region as follows:

Average Active Fund Weight &lt; I Shares MSCI Asia Ex-Japan ETF Weight (i.e net underweight)
Percentage of Funds Invested &lt; 2% (i.e less than 2% of funds hold each stock).

The list is headed by NIO Inc (NIO US) , a stock owned by just 1% of active Asia Ex-Japan funds at a net underweight of -0.54%.  In total, 577 out of the 1086 stocks in the benchmark meet this criteria.
Does it pay to avoid unloved stocks?  We have backtested a portfolio of Asia Ex-Japan Unloved stocks based on the screening criteria above, rebalanced monthly going back to 2011 and capped at 50 stocks. The performance suggests that Unloved stocks are best avoided, with consistent underperformance vs the I-Shares Asia Ex-Japan ETF since 2011. 
The analysis uses our Asia Ex-Japan fund data, comprising 97 active long-only Asia Ex-Japan funds with a combined AUM of $70bn.


iShares MSCI All Country Asia ex-Japan ETF (AAXJ US)

iShares MSCI All Country Asia ex-Japan ETF

Asia's Unloved Stocks