by Tom Bradley

“I would be interested to know where Steadyhand is situated overall as far as investment style. Edinburgh Partners seem to be value managers, but it is not clear that any of the other managers would be considered value managers.”

This was a comment from Devin on my post last week about the gap between growth and value managers. The article was in the National Post, so I couldn’t make specific reference to the Steadyhand funds.

To begin with, we’re style agnostic and have been since day one. We don’t hire fund managers because they have a particular style, but rather because they’re willing to go wherever they choose to find value. We never want our managers to feel bound by a style box that’s there for marketing purposes.

Our managers have different approaches, but they’re all ‘Undexers’. They don’t watch the indexes day to day and are willing to move around on the style spectrum.

Having said that, Devin’s observation is on the mark. Edinburgh Partners (Global Equity Fund) is more inclined to the value end of the spectrum, and currently has that tilt. CGOV (Equity Fund) and Galibier (Small-Cap Equity Fund) invest all over the style map, but their quality focus most often puts them on the growth side of the ledger.

Some firms believe they’re diversifying by having different styles on their platform. We don’t spend a minute thinking about style classifications. Salman and I feel our clients get plenty of diversity from their mix of security types, geographies, industries, company sizes and fund managers.