About The Managers
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Aventine Management Group
Barry Hirowatari CIM, FCSI
Advising Representative (Portfolio Manager)
As the Advising Representative (Portfolio Manager) at Aventine Management Group, Barry Hirowatari is the sub-advisor to the AlphaDelta Tactical Growth Class Fund.
As the sub-advisor, Barry is responsible for the Tactical Growth Fund’s tactical asset allocation and security selection. He is also a member of Aventine’s investment strategy committee. Prior to joining Aventine Management in 2010, Barry held the titles of Director, Vice President and Portfolio Manager with RBC Dominion Securities. Barry earned the FCSI (Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute) designation in 1991, CIM (Canadian Investment Manager) designation in 1993 and obtained certification as a Portfolio Manager in 1998. Barry successfully managed a discretionary investment practice for over 10 years prior to the launch of the Fund. During this time he executed investment policy on a discretionary basis for over $90 million of client assets under management and oversaw a practice with total client assets in excess of $160 million.
Amanda O’Reilly, CFA
Advising Representative (Portfolio Manager)
Amanda O’Reilly began her career in the Financial Services Sector in 2008 working in the cage at RBC Dominion Securities and quickly moved up to Branch Administrator in 2009. With an excitement for growth Amanda made the move to work for Barry in 2011 as he launched his first fund. Amanda is co-manager of the AlphaDelta Tactical Growth Fund. Amanda is a CFA® charterholder, passing all three levels consecutively, and is a member of the Vancouver CFA® Society.
About Aventine Management Group
Aventine Management is a partner-owned investment firm with a focus on capital preservation and long term growth. Founded in 2009, our investment team has over 70 years of investment management and business valuation experience. Our families are among the largest unitholders of the funds we manage, invested under the same terms and fee structure as our outside investors.We believe that superior long term investment performance is the result of managing high active share portfolios that look and act differently from the market, not from being conventional or having a consensus-seeking investment approach. Investing for us is less about avoiding risk than it is about taking risk well. This means we concentrate our capital in a limited number of opportunities where our conviction is strongest and have a plan in place to control downside in case we are wrong.Our goal is to be thoughtful, diligent and adaptive, and to earn returns for our investors that are positively disproportionate to the risks that we take on their behalf. Delivering on it requires having a well-defined game plan where active return streams are effectively understood and combined to achieve solid returns with low correlation to other traditional investment strategies.In an era of commoditized investment management and closet indexing we think that it is imperative to work with asset managers who are focused on capital preservation, have substantial skin in the game, and are nimble, accessible and accountable to investors. These are the values, principles and goals under which we manage our own money and we invite individuals who share them to consider investing alongside us.
What Does The Fund Invest In?
The AlphaDelta Tactical Growth Fund is a trend following growth fund that seeks superior capital gains with reasonable volatility through the active management of concentrated positions.The Fund follows a multi-disciplinary investment process whereby quantitative, fundamental and market trend analysis are combined with a hard-wired, technical sell discipline. The Manager seeks to identify enduring trends in the equity markets and harmonize the Fund’s asset mix and positioning to those investment opportunities. If the primary, long term equity market trend turns negative the Manager will exit equities in favour of non-correlated asset classes like cash, US Treasuries and gold.
Investment Philosophy
The Manager believes that a successful investment process must produce two key attributes: (1) an investment model with a positive excess return expectancy, and (2) a risk management framework that captures significant upside while minimizing losses.In addition the Manager makes 3 core philosophical assertions which serve as the guiding investment principles of the Fund from a portfolio strategy standpoint:
- Companies with superior earnings performance have superior share price performance. The Fund seeks to invest in companies with favourable industry dynamics, strong EPS growth momentum, a history of positive earnings surprises and strong relative price strength.
- How much of a stock you own is equally as important as which stocks you own. We refer to relative size of our positions as “Heat” and feel that this is the most overlooked characteristic in portfolio construction. The Fund follows a wealth maximization strategy that adds to winners as they rise and cuts losers as they fall. The objective is to have the Fund’s largest holdings also be its best performing positions.
- Your sell discipline is equally as important as your purchase discipline. The Manager believes that sell-side investment research is perpetually over-optimistic and that “fundamental sell” recommendations only come after large losses have already been sustained. The Fund uses a hard-wired, technical sell discipline that removes emotion from the decision making process to both lock in gains as well as protect capital.