Summit Global Leaders Fund

Am I mad to remain invested in this ?

I took a few grand out of the growth and balanced funds, closed it 2 months ago and pushed it into Quinn Life.

I now have about 5 grand left in the care of EBS asset managers with about 4500 in Global leaders and 500 in Technology. I'm pretty disillusioned with the performance of both of these funds and wish to leave the EBS anyway since the move to Irish Life because I dont think savers who were with them for years were treated fairly with respect to charges.

I had a read of the latest summit fund quarterly review and it kind of stood out to me that the Global leaders fund part it makes no mention of the big companies which have done really well out of the commodities boom like Rio Tinto ,et al.

I have read opinions that the time of big companies aka the Global leaders fund would arrive but I've yet to see it.

I'm prepared for a tiny wager on technology but I'm starting to lose faith in the story of these big companies. Does anyone have a view on this Global leaders story ?

One thing to note is that you can get lower charges on unit linked funds than those levied by EBS.

From my experience the performance of EBS Funds in general have been disappointing in the past 12-18 months compared to other funds. This may be due to the change-over from Oppenhiem to Irish Life as fund managers?

Apart from the charges, you must consider what sector the fund is invested in. Just from it's name, The Global Leaders fund is probably a large cap growth fund(LCG). Arter leading the market for 5 years(1995- 2000) and running up incredible returns, LCG has been underperforming for 5 years now. Look at the charts on microsoft, intel, cicso, walmart astrazenica vodaphone.
I think LCG is RELATIVELY cheap. This might mean it just goes down less in a correction.
Do not sell now. Inexperienced investors tend to pile in late on a trend and then regret it at their leisure. China/ India is flavour of the month now. Do not sell this fund to buy some China/ India fund.

Go ahead and change to a low cost index tracker if you must but I would not leave the LCG sector.

sign said:

Does anyone have a view on this Global leaders story ?

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The Summit Fund Annual Report which you should receive about now says that underperformance of the GLF fund was impacted by the weakness of the USD, down 11%. As 35% of the fund is in USD this could explain it.

But your point on Rio Tinto is valid as Rio has a market cap in excess of 90 bilion and the GLF says it invests in companies with a market cap in excess of 10 billion, so, considering the sucess of miners this year, why isn't it there?

You can always pop along to the Summit funds AGM on 19 July and ask them.

Thanks for the replies. The analysis of the type of fund was useful. I havent received The Summit Fund Annual Report yet. I'm not sure if turning up to the meeting might only dignify them with a response. It might be easier and less costly for me to simply cash in and find a better home for the loot.
As Clubman said, there are equivalent funds with lower charges. I think I''ll wait for the report with a view to cashing in soon. I cant find a link to the Global Leaders Fund charges but memory is telling me its probably pretty high and doing no good for the return at all.

It mystifies me as to why EBS would sell out the members who invested in their funds the way they have. They used to have a good product but its like they washed their hands of it.