Investment Week: Keyridge Systematic Core Global Equity Fund
1. Can you give an overview of the team running the fund and your investment process?
The Keyridge systematic investment team combines their investment experience with quantitative research and technology to deliver a disciplined, repeatable approach to global equity investing. The strategy is overseen by Alan Duffy, Head of Systematic Investment, alongside Ronan Bradley, Head of Quantitative Research, and Paul Murray, Senior Portfolio Manager. Collectively, the portfolio management team has a median industry tenure of around 20 years.
The investment process follows four stages. First, the team assesses around 1,800 companies using 10 proprietary factors - drivers of investment returns - across four families: value, growth, quality and momentum, constructed using economic fundamentals. Each factor is selected based on clear economic rationale: why it should generate excess returns and why that opportunity is likely to persist. Second, the signals are combined into a single score for each company, designed so that no single factor dominates the overall outcome. Third, the team conducts validation and risk checks designed to ensure that outputs remain robust and consistent with expectations. However, the team does not override individual stock selections once the model has run. Finally, the portfolio is optimised within predefined constraints to create a portfolio of approximately 230 holdings, targeting consistent excess returns with controlled tracking error and benchmark risk.
2. What do you see as the big opportunities and risks for your fund for the rest of the year and moving into 2027? How are you positioned in this environment?
The fund is not positioned for a specific investment style or market environment; the underlying combination of factors adapts systematically in response to changing market conditions. We designed it this way because no single factor works in every market environment; the strength of a systematic approach lies not in relying on a single source of alpha, but in combining multiple return drivers.
We don't take a view on which investment style will outperform; the weightings of these return drivers adapt automatically. The change in factor weightings is based on dispersion (the spread of scores), i.e. how widely a factor is separating companies at the time. When that spread widens, the factor is discriminating more, so its weight in the combined score rises. When it narrows – when every stock scores much the same within the model – the weight falls back. Over time, as conditions change, the balance will naturally shift between different investment styles.
Combining this with tight country limits and position constraints allows us to participate in attractive opportunities while avoiding excessive exposure to any single theme or market outcome. This disciplined approach aims to generate consistent excess returns through varying market environments while maintaining close alignment with the benchmark's overall risk profile.
The primary risks are those typically associated with equity markets, including shifts in investor sentiment, changing economic conditions and periods when factor signals become less differentiated. Our positioning reflects these realities.
3. Can you identify a couple of key investment opportunities you are playing at the moment in the portfolio?
Rather than expressing high-conviction thematic views, our model is designed to assess every stock individually across value, growth, quality and momentum characteristics, as above. This creates opportunities for us to identify attractive companies regardless of size, sector or prevailing market narratives, holding a large and diversified portfolio rather than a small number of similar positions.
This approach helps allow us to navigate concentration, one of the defining features of global equity markets over the past decade. Rather than taking a view on, or avoiding, a small number of large companies, our model aims to discriminate within the crowd rather than take a view on the crowd as a whole. The largest index constituents are scored on the same factor families as everything else. Some of them score well, reflecting genuine earnings growth, good quality and positive revisions, and we have held those at a modest overweight. Others have scored poorly, typically because they looked expensive relative to what they were actually delivering, and we have held those underweight. This illustrates that we can use the same rules to come to opposite conclusions, within the same group of stocks, without taking a view on a theme.
For more information on our approach to systematic equity investing, check out our dedicated hub.
The value of investments may fall as well as rise and investors may not get back the amount invested.
The views expressed in this document are those of the fund manager at the time of publication and should not be taken as advice, a forecast or a recommendation to buy or sell securities. These views are subject to change at any time without notice.
This document is issued for information only by Keyridge Asset Management. This document does not constitute a direct offer to anyone, or a solicitation by anyone, to subscribe for shares or buy units in fund(s). Subscription for shares and buying units in the fund(s) must only be made on the basis of the latest Prospectus and the Key Investor Information Document (KIID) available at https://www.keyridge.com
Keyridge Asset Management Limited, trading as Irish Life Investment Managers and trading as Setanta Asset Management, is authorised and regulated as an investment firm by the Central Bank of Ireland. Keyridge Asset Management Limited is registered in Ireland. Registered office is Irish Life Centre, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 1 (Company registration number: 116000). Keyridge Asset Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority to provide investment services in the UK through a UK branch.
Keyridge Asset Management Limited is also registered as an Investment Adviser with the Securities and Exchange Commission and holds the International Adviser Exemption in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec pursuant to NI 31-103.
