Orbis £100 match offer - Now Ended

Alexland

keyboardworrier wrote: »

A bump to let people know that they are currently sending out survey emails, if you take the longer survey they are offering you a £10 Amazon voucher. If anyone signed up with a lesser used email address it may be worth checking!

Thanks I glazed over the email too - we just each completed it for £20. Interesting one of the questions asked if we had heard about this via MSE - wonder if they know about this thread as I am not aware of them formally appearing on the MSE site?

To be honest I have been slightly disappointed by the performance of the equity fund in the past 3 months down 10.3% compared to the MSCI World down only 5.2%. I did email them and they gave a very articulate response shared below. I have since been adding to our accounts to average down.

The recent relative performance of the Global Equity Fund is certainly disappointing; however, its track record includes multiple periods of underperformance. Some of these have been short and sharp, with performance recovering relatively quickly, while others have been less pronounced but painfully long. As uncomfortable as this and other periods of underperformance have been, we view them as an inherent characteristic of our contrarian investment approach and, ultimately, as the price we must pay for seeking superior long-term returns on behalf of our clients.

To build on the information you may have noted from the June Half Yearly Report you mentioned, the prices of five large positions in the Fund (NetEase, Symantec, Arconic, Sberbank and AbbVie) have fallen, which has dragged the overall performance of the Fund down. At such times, we focus on assessing whether intrinsic value has fallen by as much as that share price. We retain conviction in many of the underperforming stocks, which continue to be big positions in the Fund. Indeed, such periods of underperformance can be a good opportunity to add to our high conviction positions. An example of this is NetEase, which was the biggest detractor recently after it reported lower profits due to investments in newer businesses, specifically its e-commerce business and a new genre of online games. We have owned the stock since 2008 and retain conviction in our long-term investment thesis despite weakness in short-term profits. We have therefore continued to add to the position in recent periods given the opportunity to purchase shares at lower valuations.

The below slide demonstrates the power of investing for the long term. The shaded area shows the range of absolute performance outcomes that the Orbis Global Equity Strategy has seen in the past, over different investment horizons. As you can see, for shorter periods of time, the range of outcomes has been far wider, and very much includes periods of negative returns. However, as we look at periods of greater than 5 years, the instances of negative returns is virtually non-existent. What this graph shows is that historically, the likelihood of loss has greatly reduced over the long term, even with periods of underperformance.

Alex

cjv

Thanks for the heads up, the email had gone straight in the trash.

I just completed it for the voucher, I was honest and conveyed that I only invested for the free money with intention to withdraw it as soon as I can.

Voyager2002

Thank you for this...


I had also deleted the email but retrieved it and completed the survey.

Alexland

Our email gift vouchers just arrived to help with Christmas presents.

chockydavid1983

Nice, I completely missed the incentive too- thanks guys :-).

MallyGirl

me too - now completed the survey

Shedman

Thanks. I'd not read them properly either and just trashed them. £10 each for me and missus will help offset their poor performance so far.

fiisch

Does anyone plan to stay with Orbis beyond the bonus period?

Is there any reason for a newbie investor with current fairly modest amounts to choose Orbis over Vanguard, for instance?

Alexland

I plan to stay as the strategy has been delivering 14.8% per annum since inception to Dec-17 although after the performance fee and incorporating the latest data 'only' 10.8% but still favourable compared to the MSCI World (if it was possible to invest without platform or fund fees) at 7.2% in the same period.

Appreciate its hard to see this after recent performance but I joined earlier so have seen the nicer end of the stick.

Still I understand this won't be for everyone and many people get comfort in seeing their investments move in line with the indexes as it removes the doubt that they might have made a bad decision.

Alex

fiisch

Alexland wrote: »

I plan to stay as the strategy has been delivering 14.8% per annum since inception to Dec-17 although after the performance fee and incorporating the latest data 'only' 10.8% but still favourable compared to the MSCI World (if it was possible to invest without platform or fund fees) at 7.2% in the same period.

Appreciate its hard to see this after recent performance but I joined earlier so have seen the nicer end of the stick.

Alex

I'm pretty impressed with the service overall, and in the current climate performance hasn't been too disastrous, but as I only opened the account in April I've seen more rough than smooth!

I've actually got three accounts with them between my wife, my daughter and I, so alternatively I could potentially split strategy and move one over to Vanguard, but as the amounts are currently very modest it seems unnecessary at this stage... I'll compare the two in April and see how well they've weathered the impending storm*.



*which may or may not happen.