LFF, how to cope with today’s world in the presentations at the Forum

The Lantern Fund Forum was held in Lugano on November 20th and 21st. Presentations and talks were held, with John Mauldin as the keynote speaker. In the next few days, Marketplus will report about the various presentations, which can be found here. https://finlantern.com/fundforum/slide-presentations-lff-2017/

Pharus Sicav explained the development of the biotechnologies revolution, which started with the mapping of the human genoma in 2000. The number of people older than 60 will keep growing, creating a bigger need for biotechnological remedies, from cancer related treatments to ones for the heart or for neurological disorders. At the time of the presentation, more than 1000 biotechnological medicines were in the pipeline and more have been developed in the last 15 years, requiring less time to be approved. Pharus then outlined one of the latest case studies and showed how they performed at the Stock Exchange. Beat Leukemia.org foundation then gave a testimony about reinventing chemotherapy.

Diversification as the way to invest in today’s market: this is the core of Aberdeen’s presentation and its strategy for asset management. Challenges lately have regarded a glut in savings, the ageing in demographics, deglobalisation and China’s adjustment, while politics has influenced the world with growing uncertainties, such as Brexit or Donald Trump and some of his policies, including the Mexican Wall. Diversification allows a reliable long-term growth which is less susceptible to equity downturns. Renewable infrastructures and alternative markets are something to look at.

E-Commerce is the core business for the Netcomm Suisse Association, covering over 80 international fashion brands in Ticino. The market went from outsourcing to internationalization and ROI performance, with team building and technology acquisition, and will keep on with innovation. Netcomm Suisse went on to explain six cases, like the one of Ray-Ban and remix technology, using 3D rendering, or chat bots and personalized answers. Fashion innovation awards, moreover, are another project with a board.

Minerva Group service explained how GDPR are “landing”, regarding data protection. Non-complying businesses risk huge administrative fines. It involves automated means and the processing of data. Provisions apply to all activities within the EU. Remedies and fines are to be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. Fines can be up to 10 million euros for companies up to 2% of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, while it goes up to 20 million if the percentage is 4%. Controllers can be legal persons, public authorities, agencies or other bodies with appropriate technical measures.

Unigestion spoke about the need for liquid diversifiers and the introduction of alternative risk premia. Investors need alternatives to traditional assets to improve the risk/return profile of their portfolios. Traditional alternatives have disappointed lately, with high costs and timing sensitivity. Alternative risk premia are, according to Unigestion, cost-efficient, liquid, diversifying and reliable. Chasing trends seems profitable. Families are macro directional, yield capture, equity factors.

The performance gap between active managers and passive ETFs was the presentation by Trendrating. A fact is that more than 80 per cent of US funds underperformed benchmarks on 3,5, 10, 15 years and the same applies to the Eurozone. The explanation of this phenomenon is fees, while ETFs have a much lower fee structure. On the other hand, the distribution of performance across stocks is massive, in the SP500 Index top 20% gained 61% over the last 12 months, while the the bottom 20% produced -9%. There are a few reasons for what is not working in active management, such as some managers rely too much on fundamentals and are hostage of a discretionary, judgmental approach. The first solution is to understand that a change is needeed and realize the importance of capturing trends. One way is momentum, that analysis measures, rates, compare the direction and strenght of price trends that last from a few months up to 2-to-3 years. It has been validated by dozen studies.