Trimark Fund

Analysis: To say that Trimark has gone through some tough times in the past few years is like saying there are some concerns aboutGreece’s outstanding debt. The company has struggled with retaining managers and has been experiencing significant net outflows for years. The Trimark Fund is not that different, having been through a number of managers in the past few years. Current lead manager, Dana Love has been working on the fund since 2004. In August of this year, after the departure of Heather Pierce, the team of Jeff Feng, Michael Hatcher and Darren McKiernan joined Mr. Love on the fund.

Despite the turnover, the one thing that has remained constant with this fund is the stock picking discipline, which in simple terms is “business people buying businesses”. They use a value focused, bottom up approach and look for a concentrated portfolio of high quality businesses. Obviously, the downside of this approach is that there will be periods of time where the market does not reward quality and the fund will underperform.

However, there will also be periods of time when the market will focus on quality. Given the high levels of uncertainty combined with the significant level of volatility, the Trimark Fund is well positioned to benefit. The managers have built a portfolio of high quality companies that they feel are very attractively valued. In fact, Dana Love has stated that this is the highest quality portfolio he’s ever seen during his time with the fund.

And the markets are starting to recognize this quality. The fund has been delivering first or second quartile performance as of late, and has outpaced the MSCI World Index over the past 10 years. Given the current environment, we expect that the Trimark Fund will continue to deliver better than peer group performance for the near to medium term.