WS Keyridge North American Fund

Essential features of the Fund

• The Fund invests at least 80% of its assets in the shares of companies which are incorporated or domiciled in North America, including real estate investment trusts (REITs).

• It can invest across different industry sectors and market capitalisations without limitation.

• It may also invest up to 20% of the assets by value in debt securities (such as corporate bonds, government and public securities), money market instruments, deposits and cash, but in practice this is generally a much smaller proportion.

• Investment in collective investment schemes is limited to 10% of the assets by value.

• The Fund may use derivatives for the purpose of efficient portfolio management.

• Up to 25% of the Fund’s holdings by value may be used to generate additional income from stock lending.

For further details on the objective and investment policy, visit the Literature section to view full KIIDs and Prospectus.

How the Fund is managed

Investment philosophy

The fund follows a macro-first, style-agnostic approach designed to identify major market and economic trends early. This enables us to take exposure to high-conviction investment ideas in a flexible and pragmatic way, often before they are fully reflected in traditional bottom-up analysis. Portfolio decisions are made with a clear awareness of prevailing investment conditions, market dynamics and risk considerations.

Process

The strategy follows a macro-driven framework that integrates long-term structural themes with shorter-term cyclical factors. The starting point is identifying structural investment themes over a 3–5 year horizon, such as AI, reindustrialisation, and energy transition. These define the core opportunity set – essentially what to own.

A cyclical overlay is then applied, analysing variables like inflation, interest rates, liquidity, and commodity cycles to determine how much to own of each theme at any point in time.

Portfolio construction combines these inputs into a diversified portfolio of 80–100 stocks, organised into macro ‘baskets’ (e.g. AI ecosystem, industrial reshoring) rather than traditional sectors. This structure aims to reduce concentration risk and enhance flexibility across different market regimes.

Risk is managed dynamically through tracking error targets (2.5%–4%), sector limits, and disciplined diversification, with the objective of delivering consistent alpha and strong downside protection while avoiding extreme concentration.

Reasons to recommend

Reasons to recommend

Macro first approach
The Fund uses a macro-first approach which allows us to invest in an increasingly volatile world. The investment regime that persisted between the Global Financial Criss and COVID was characterised by low and stable inflation, quantitative easing and globalisation, a world where asset light companies perform well. We believe this regime has ended and that we are now in a regime characterised by volatile inflation, fiscal policy and deglobalisation, which can benefit asset heavy companies.

Style agnostic
The Fund will invest across all sectors, stocks and styles dependent on investment opportunity, macroeconomic backdrop and valuation. It will not be unduly biased towards any one theme or style but instead respond to the investment opportunities as they present themselves. The managers typically have skillsets in different sectors and styles which aims to provide the best combined result. This approach is different:
it is highly flexible. This enables us to outperform in different macro regimes.

A key differentiator is the dual portfolio manager structure, allowing different perspectives to coexist, blending value and growth and other factor and style groups to create a style-agnostic, pragmatic approach that aims to consistently outperform.

Every position is a decision
We think in active weights. We recognise that avoiding stocks that underperform is just as important as finding stocks that outperform. From a risk perspective it is easy to lose alpha by ignoring large caps that go up.