| Fund Company | Sentry Investments |
| Fund Type | Canadian Focused Equity |
| Rating | C |
| Style | Mid Cap Growth |
| Risk Level | Medium |
| Load Status | Optional |
| RRSP/RRIF Suitability | Poor |
| TFSA Suitability | Poor |
| Manager | Michael Simpson since January 2013 |
| MER | 3.20% |
| Code | NCE 722 – Front End Units NCE 322 – DSC Units |
| Minimum Investment | $500 |
Analysis: In the past couple of years, this is a fund that has undergone some pretty significant changes. There has been a bit of a revolving door on the manager’s office for this fund since its launch in 2005. It seemed to have a new manager every two years.
Despite that, the fund did begin to gain favour with investors and advisors alike under the management of Andrew McCreath. Under his management, it was managed much like a “hedge fund light”. It used a bit of shorting, active trading and other techniques to try to deliver absolute returns for investors. It was something different, and provided investors with very strong risk adjusted returns.
In August 2011, Mr. McCreath and Sentry parted ways, with John Kim stepping into the manager’s chair. Under his tenure, the fund continued to thrive and generated decent risk adjusted returns for investors. Despite this, assets continued to flow from the fund. As of December 31, the fund gained 10.3%, outpacing both the index and the category. However, total assets in the fund had declined to around $164 million, from its peak of nearly $320 million in 2010.
Given this loss of assets, Sentry decided that something needed to be done and they removed John Kim from the fund, giving the fund over the Michael Simpson. Mr. Simpson has been with Sentry since 2002 and is the lead manager on a number of other Sentry funds, including one of our favourites, the Sentry Canadian Income Fund. They have also changed the name from Sentry Diversified Total Return Fund to Sentry Diversified Equity Fund.
Under the new mandate, it is expected that the fund will become more of a traditional value focused equity fund. To be honest, we are lukewarm at best on this move. With all due respect to Sentry and Mr. Simpson, there is already a number of high quality traditional Canadian focused equity funds available to investors. This will likely be another addition to that list.
Time will tell if this is the right move for the fund. For now we will stick with our current list of favourite Canadian equity funds until we see a demonstrated history of above average performance on this fund.