News article from Investor Daily today is a worthwhile read.

The implication of this is potentially significant for Australia's absolute return and hedge funds sector - assuming they qualify under the SIV rules, and assuming they are sufficiently well organised to market to the UHNW Chinese market.

There still appears to be some question marks around the use of derivatives which might make qualifying difficult for many hedge funds, and the sector has never had the benefit of an industry wide marketing or communications plan which it needs.

Read the entire article here.

Further details of the new MySuper rules emerged this week, even if drowned out somewhat by other announcements from Canberra. However in principal the thrust of MySuper is admirable, if the stated objectives are achieved:

• creation of a simple, low cost default superannuation product
• cheaper and easier processing of transactions, and
• strengthen the governance, integrity and regulatory settings of the superannuation system, including SMSF's.

Anything that simplifies Super, or creates a lower cost structure, particularly for super accounts with lower balances, is to be applauded. In this regard, the push for more transparency can only assist. However the risk is that the focus falls more on the fee structure than the actual risk adjusted returns after fees.

While it is easy to point to high fees as a destroyer of an investment's value, performance has a far greater effect, particularly in negative markets. Hopefully the new MySuper transparency and reporting regime will recognise this.

Elsewhere, we noticed a good article in InvestorDaily quoting Pengana's CEO Russel Pillemer, who (correctly in our view) points to the flawed logic of placing many hedge and absolute return funds into the "alternatives" bucket. All too often anything that can't be categorised easily ends up as an alternative, with no real analysis of its return profile or correlation to other asset classes.

Russel's suggestion is to allocate to a category called "uncorrelated", as that is what most investors are seeking from a true alternative investment. In our opinion, the majority of equity long/short strategies might then more correctly fit in the equities bucket, or at least active equities.

At the end of the day simply having a low correlation to equities doesn't really work 100% of the time. What investors want, or need, is an asymmetric return profile where the fund captures the market's upside (a high up capture ratio) and avoids the downside (a low downside capture ratio).

Easier said than done in a single fund, and not always easy when constructing a portfolio, but worth the effort. 

Performance and News Updates on www.fundmonitors.com this week:

The Pengana Australian Equities Market Neutral Fund had a good March 2013 returning 3.2% bringing it's since inception (September 2008) return to 9.21% pa with a zero correlation to the market of -0.02.

BlackRock Multi Opportunity Fund had a sound March 2013 with a return of 1.09% and a twelve month return of 9.70% with positive returns in each of the 3 months of the quarter.

The Pengana Asia Special Events (Onshore) Fund returned 0.83% for March 2013 and 3.28% for the quarter to end-March.  Notably the Fund has a volatility of 6.7% as compared to its benchmark volatility of 17.8% (since inception).

Pengana Australian Equities Fund had a flat March with a return of 0.0% but strong 12 and 24 month returns, delivering 22.5% and 33.06% respectively to the end of March 2013. At month-end cash (including notes and preference shares) represented 32% of the Fund.

The K2 Australian Absolute Return Fund had a strong April 2013 delivering 4.54% with its annual return to the end of April, 23.99%.

Continuing our successful Meet the Manager presentation series, on Thursday 16 May, AFM is holding a city lunch time briefing featuring Jack Lowenstein from Morphic Asset Management. The Morphic Global Opportunities Fund is a global equity long/short manager with a macro-economic overlay. The Fund's portfolio construction has a long bias and favours value based and momentum strategies, with a strong emphasis on risk management. If you would like to join us for the presentation, please reply to this email.

And finally, for something completely different, we bring you a short clip from Cancer Council NSW on Relay for Life.  This weekend our Administration Manager Alexis will be camping out and walking for 24 hours out at the Sutherland Shire Relay and we support her in this worthy cause.  

On that note, I hope you have a happy and healthy weekend!

Regards,

Chris Gosselin
CEO, AUSTRALIAN FUND MONITORS

"MySuper product providers will be required to disclose investment risk, the dollar value of fees and their investment performance in an easy to read way, the Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, Bill Shorten revealed today.

The Government has issued draft regulations that represent the final stage of the Government?s MySuper reforms and are aimed at helping Australians better understand how their fund is performing".

You can read Mr Shorten's comments here.  And the draft Regulation is published on the Treasury site.