How fund managers adapt to market fluctuations

IT’S no longer just death and taxes that are inevitable. Uncertainty and volatility have become permanent fixtures in the investment landscape, reshaping how fund managers approach decision-making.

- STAFF REPORTER

In this environment, sound investment strategies are less about chasing perfection and more about applying rigorous processes, identifying opportunities, and learning from missteps. The goal is not to be right all the time, but to be consistently right more often than not.

Amplify Investment Partners’ fund managers are tuned into this reality. Their focus is not on market noise but on making informed choices, and just as importantly, learning from the ones that didn’t pan out.

Wessel Joubert, investment analyst at OysterCatcher, which manages the Amplify SCI Equity Fund and the Amplify SCI Managed Equity Retail Hedge Fund, draws a compelling analogy from sport. “Roger Federer won almost 80% of all the tennis matches he played, yet he won only 54% of the points. Consistently making the right choices over the long term is what drives sustained top-quartile performance. It is increasingly about knowing when to take opportunities and when to hold on when markets dip," he says.

This philosophy is embedded in the fund’s investment process, which includes modelling company earnings and dividends four years into the future and determining an exit valuation multiple. A recent example is their reassessment of Capitec’s earnings multiple.

“For Capitec, we argued that they were a bank and once they reach a certain percentage of the bank sector market share, their valuation multiple should revert towards that of a high-quality South African bank as the growth will slow at that point,” Joubert says.