# A tool to spy on what managed funds are investing in?



## tr4deme (9 April 2017)

Hi guys... Not sure if this already exists, but is there a tool for figuring out what substantial holdings specific managed funds have?

I know that it's possible to see this in the 'announcements' section on the asx on a company by company basis, but is there any way to type in, e.g. 'blackrock' and know how much they have invested in specific companies across their various funds?


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## Gringotts Bank (10 April 2017)

Many managed funds list their top 10 or so holdings on their websites.  For obvious reasons, I think anything beyond that will be hard to access.

If you want to know companies with good fundamentals, Lincoln.


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## skc (10 April 2017)

tr4deme said:


> Hi guys... Not sure if this already exists, but is there a tool for figuring out what substantial holdings specific managed funds have?
> 
> I know that it's possible to see this in the 'announcements' section on the asx on a company by company basis, but is there any way to type in, e.g. 'blackrock' and know how much they have invested in specific companies across their various funds?




Near impossible would be my guess. Someone like Blackrock would have so many different strategies under different funds... it probably wouldn't make much sense even if you have access to the information.


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## OmegaTrader (10 April 2017)

tr4deme said:


> Hi guys... Not sure if this already exists, but is there a tool for figuring out what substantial holdings specific managed funds have?
> 
> I know that it's possible to see this in the 'announcements' section on the asx on a company by company basis, but is there any way to type in, e.g. 'blackrock' and know how much they have invested in specific companies across their various funds?





I can see the basis of the idea. Follow the other guy who spends his resources analysing investments.

Mimic it to some extent without the fees.

Could give some insights trying to reverse engineers the smart/big boys.

Still would need all of the other aspects to the strategy sorted, risk management, rules etc.

Plus there is no guarantee  the big boys will perform.

Interesting idea, don't know how far or practically it could implemented. Interesting though...


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## DeepState (10 April 2017)

Go in to the Form 13F releases of the hedge funds you think are gurus.  They list the biggest holdings and changes on the long side.  They should be more pure in terms of strategy relevance than a multi offering firm like BLK-US so you can utilise the idea of trailing their ideas more readily.


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## kermit345 (11 April 2017)

Something that may be food for thought:

To the end of 2016 the following represents the percentage of managed funds that under-performed the index for large cap style funds in australia (taken from S&P's SPIVA Australian Scorecard):
1 Year - 76%
3 Year - 67%
5 Year - 70%
10 Year - 74%

The above also doesn't mean the same funds are the ones performing better than the index for each of those periods either, essentially meaning whichever funds you pick there is only a 1 in 4 chance it will outperform the index and even then its not guaranteed to do it across all time periods.

Mid/Small cap funds are a little friendlier which also makes sense as it can be a more specialized area AND fund managers in this space can ignore the dead wood type companies:
1 Year - 82%
3 Year - 62%
5 Year - 48%
10 Year - 32%

The thing to be mindful of in the mid/small cap space though is that once a fund manager does well for a couple of years and their FUM grows they can start to become index/large cap centric anyway as they become limited by how much they can invest in the small companies they like. Therefore when picking a good smallcap manager you need to make sure they have structures in place that limit the level of FUM they are willing to take on or grow to.

The story becomes even worse for International large caps ex-Australia:
1 Year - 86%
3 Year - 94%
5 Year - 93%
10 Year - 89%

Moral of the story (in my opinion) is use index's for international and aussie large cap exposure whilst adding stocks at the edges (either yourself or via a fund) in the mid/small cap space.


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## Gringotts Bank (11 April 2017)

http://www.gurufocus.com/gurutrac/guru_top_holdings.php


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## Gringotts Bank (11 April 2017)

hmm, not a bad website that one.


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## OmegaTrader (11 April 2017)

kermit345 said:


> Something that may be food for thought:
> 
> To the end of 2016 the following represents the percentage of managed funds that under-performed the index for large cap style funds in australia (taken from S&P's SPIVA Australian Scorecard):
> 1 Year - 76%
> ...




Really interesting. Picking the consistent winner would help to some extent with this strategy.
But it shows following  the big/smart boys is no guarantee.


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## kermit345 (11 April 2017)

Yeh unfortunately there are no stats on what percentage outperformed the index across all 4 timeframes but my guess is it would be a very very small percentage if at all. For instance there are around 310 australian large cap managed funds, for each of those time periods around 25% or 77 funds outperform the index. My guess would be that of these 77 funds you'd be looking at maybe 1-10 funds that have outperformed the index across all 4 of those timeframes.

My thinking is for the risk you take on by picking a fund manager, why not just pay the lower fee and know straight away you're outperforming roughly 70% of all funds.


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