Investors offered new way into equities

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Investors in Australia and New Zealand are being offered a new way to invest in global equity markets.

Thursday, February 4th 2016, 6:00AM 3 Comments

A group of international equities managers has launched an online retail investor platform called AtlasTrend, which helps investors gain exposure to international listed blue-chip companies.

Australian-owend AtlasTrend has created four Trend Funds – Online Shopping Spree, Healthy Lifestyle, Splurging Baby Boomers and Big Data Big – that give retail investors exposure to these trends.

It charges monthly membership fees starting from A$27 per month, with no additional management fee, and a 15% performance-based withdrawal fee on realised pre-tax profit.

Membership fees also include online access information on all underlying investments updated on a daily basis. Investors can then use this information to determine their own level of exposure to a particular Trend Fund. Members can also use the information as a guide to make their own international equity investments and have no obligation to invest with AtlasTrend.

A minimum investment of A$1000 or $100 per month is required.

Members are exposed to about 5000 international listed companies, which AtlasTrend said were otherwise too difficult or expensive for retail investors to access.

Each Trend Fund is then narrowed down to eight to 12 hig- conviction stock investments which typically have a minimum market.

Since the inception of the four Trend Funds in November 2015, the funds have all outperformed the MSCI World Net Total Return Index in Australian Dollars by over an average of 5.3%.

The three co-founders, Kent Kwan, Jade Ong and Kevin Hua, have a strong track record of investment management experience, having previously managed A$2 billion for investors in international equities with some of the world’s largest and most respected financial institutions.

Kwan said: “AtlasTrend is a truly transformational and disruptive investment product, handing back control to retail investors by giving our members unique exposure to international equity funds, aligned with key global growth thematics such as big data and online shopping.

“Just as discount brokers disrupted the stockbroking industry a decade ago, AtlasTrend plans to transform the traditional fund manager model by opening up managed funds to the masses through providing an engaging, educational, transparent and user-friendly online investment platform at an affordable price,” he said.

“By harnessing the power of technology, our investment system automates a large proportion of the traditional investment process, allowing our team to spend more time and energy on the key investment trends and underlying companies, and lowering fees for our members.

“AtlasTrend is a great example of a home grown Australian business that is using a combination of technology and extensive investment industry experience to create a fintech offering that is one of the first of its kind in the world. We look forward to adding new Trend Funds as our member base grows.”

New Zealand advisers were positive about the development.

Norman Stacey, of Diversified Investments, said: “It is a new and innovative approach so should be applicable to a subset of investors. The challenge for innovative investments in New Zealand now is to attain critical size such that their fixed cost are efficient. There are so very few advisers independent to the extent they can select and recommend new investment, as distinct from doing their master’s bidding.

“Most advisers work for fund managers, and have little discretion to recommend investments outside associated funds. Associated funds may have both percentage and performance-related fees, and will unlikely wish to be ‘shown up by a better performing or cheaper fund."

Simon Hassan, of Hassan and Associates, said AtlasTrend could provide a core low-cost equity holding for investor portfolios.

Tags: equities financial advisers

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