Dominion Asset Management Limited (DAM) is the investment arm of the Dominion Group. DAM is based in London and includes 6 professionals with extensive experience in financial markets.
DAM has been involved with the development of the Dominion Capital Strategies (DCS) investment proposition since the beginning, developing the systems used to select the underlying assets in the DCS Funds’ portfolios, and the Funds’ management systems.
DAM was asked to develop 3 risk-rated funds, which are now known as Cautious, Balanced and Aggressive Funds (ABC). Risk-rated funds are normally a mix of equity and bond funds. As a result, the most efficient way to create a good asset allocation for these funds was to work on the building blocks. That meant selecting a basket of global bond and global equity funds, so that mixing them would provide the 3 ABC Funds with 3 distinct risk profiles.
The DAM team immediately started working on the development of a fund selection system which would allow us to select not just the best performing funds in each category, but also the fund managers capable of delivering the best risk-adjusted performance. We back-tested the results and applied stress-tests, making sure that these fund managers were able to capture a below-average drawdown in times of crisis. This clearly demonstrates better capital protection of shareholders’ investments.
On the back of the above process, we were able to present not just the 3 ABC Funds, but also another 2 investments propositions: the DCS Global Equity Fund and the DCS Global Bond Fund. If we look at these 5 investment funds carefully, they are actually 5 risk-rated funds. The DCS Global Bond Fund carries the lowest level of risk, then the Cautious and Balanced Funds, then the Aggressive Fund. This last fund carries a higher risk profile than the Balanced Fund, but lower than the Global Equity Fund.
The work didn’t stop there. Because Dominion’s aim was to offer a comprehensive set of investment propositions to cover all appetites for risk, the 5 funds above have been complemented by two more. An Emerging Markets Equity Fund, which carries an even higher risk profile than the Global Equity Fund (due to the more volatile nature of emerging markets), and a Cash Fund, a sort of safe haven for difficult market periods. To use a metaphor: when markets get stormy, the Cash Fund is a port in which to moor your boat. At Dominion, the pioneer spirit is encoded into our DNA. So, DAM didn’t want to stop there, and nor did we: we wanted to offer something new. Something different. Something that DCS clients would struggle to find elsewhere. That’s why we developed another 2 investment funds: DCS New Technologies and DCS Sustainable Growth. At time of writing, these bespoke and innovative funds complete the DCS investment proposition.
Author: Alessandro Hor – Investment Manager
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