Manager review
The Harvest product has been managed by Chen Shaoping, also the fund house’s research director, since April last year. She has 14 years of investment experience, with nine years managing mutual funds.
She joined Manulife Teda Fund Management in October 2003, holding various positions as an analyst of pharmaceutical, petrochemical and consumption industry to fund manager and research director.
She moved on to Harvest in September 2014 and currently manages two funds.
For the ABC-CA fund, Juan Fu, also the investment director of the firm, has run the fund since its inception in April 2012. She has nine years of experience in the securities field, plus four years in mutual fund management. She had served as the lead analyst for the household appliance sector at Shenyin Wanguo Securities, as well as an assistant fund manager at ABC-CA.
In addition to ABC-CA Consumption Theme Equity, Fu currently manages two aggressive allocation funds.
Overall, “Chen has longer investment experience and has been through several market cycles and change in investment styles from growth to value. But she has less than two years of experience running the current Harvest fund,” Dai said.
“But Fu still has experience longer than industry average. Her investment capability is also recognised by the company, with Fu being the firm’s investment director.”
Fees
Both funds have an annual management charge of 1.50% and custodian fees of 0.25%, which are in line with peer funds, Dai noted.
“A criticism of the [ABC-CA] fund lies in its high expense ratio, as the manager’s short investment horizon results in higher portfolio turnover and trading costs,” Morningstar noted in a report.
Its expense ratio reached 3.57% in 2015, compared to Harvest’s 2.43% in the same period.
Conclusion
Dai said both funds focus strongly on growth, which suits investors who are comfortable with a higher level of risk and volatility. They also have a similarly diversified portfolio, with the top 10 stock holdings accounting for roughly 45% of the net assets, as of June.
However, due to a comparatively steady performance, she prefers the Harvest fund.
“In terms of the fund performance and investment style of the portfolio manager, the Harvest fund shows lower volatility with a more stable performance.
“Also, it has a more flexible investment strategy by adapting different strategies when the market condition changes. It could mean better performance when the market is on a downtrend.”
