Investment Committee May-DMG Diversified Portfolio

At the May Investment Committee Meeting, Bart Dowling, our Portfolio Manager presented his research on recessions. There is no need for alarm and we don't expect to see one in the short term here or overseas. However as always, we like to be prepared for major events like these, so we discussed the causes, historical timing and impact of past US recessions. We then considered the strategies we would engage and in particular the portfolio changes we would implement. We left the meeting feeling as well prepared as we can be. Lukasz de Pourbaix our research consultant from Lonsec also updated us on their view of the market and our portfolio positioning. He was happy with our current holdings.

Our review of existing holdings focused on the review meeting that Bart and I have had with managers over the last month. We have met with Smarter Money, T Rowe Price, L1 and also attended presentations by Invesco GTR, Vanguard and Fidelity Australian Equities. All of these went well and we are continuing our due diligence process.

We are having a closer look at AQR Managed Futures, one of our Alternative Fund Managers. We are confident they will perform very well in a period of prolonged downturn in markets and we want to be confident that whilst we are waiting for this period that they will continue to add value. Again we are in a good position of being able to carefully review the managers without having any surprises or cause for alarm.