FNArena’s Weekly Insights – June 23 2025
In today’s Weekly Insights:
Ten Years Of All-Weather Model Portfolio
By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, Editor
A few weeks ago I was asked to provide some performance statistics for stocks held in the FNArena-Vested Equities All-Weather Model Portfolio. Revisiting the early days of the Portfolio back in 2015 proved quite the illuminating exercise.
For starters, the number one stand-out performer proved not one I would have instinctively picked had I been asked the question beforehand. But numbers don’t lie and there it was; Aristocrat Leisure ((ALL)) beating everything else over the ten years up until May this year.
I am well aware this company is not to everyone’s liking or taste, and I certainly don’t want to make this international giant in the gaming industry the posterboy of my research or the Portfolio, but I have no problem pointing out this company remains one of the strongest and most successful growth stories on the ASX; and it is a large cap company, proudly and solidly embedded inside the local Top 20.
But, when I do say numbers don’t lie, we should all remain cognisant of the fact that starting and end points of our calculations are arbitrary and a lot of bias can creep in, also depending on how and when we measure returns.
Notes From A Ten-Year Journey
Back in May I simply went back in time by ten years, April to April, because the Portfolio has now completed its first decade of active existence. It soon dawned upon me, adding context and interpretation remains vital.
For example: I have repeated the exercise over the past weekend –June to June– and this time the decade’s all-round winner is ERP-SaaS services provider TechnologyOne ((TNE)), thanks to yet another strong rally over the past two months, whereas shares in Aristocrat Leisure lack clear momentum due to too many question marks about tariffs, the US dollar and the US economy.
The message to all of us remains the same: don’t be too easily bamboozled by backward-looking calculations, also pay attention to context and details. As the starting point was ten years ago, changes at this stage of the period can have an outsized impact on the return calculations overall.
Having said so, I have absolutely no reason to complain and can also now report TechOne has become the first company in the All-Weather Portfolio that has generated a return of 1000%. Yes, that’s not a typo.
