Selwood Equity Absolute Return UCITS Fund

Selwood Asset Management was founded in 2015 by Sofiane Gharred and currently manages $2bn in assets. The Selwood Equity Team is led by Karim Moussalem and Kevin Guillot who developed their investment process together at Verrazzano Capital from 2012 to 2017. The team employs a European Long/Short Equity strategy focused on mid and large capitalizations, utilizing a combination of trading and fundamental analysis. The investment process starts with a universe of around 830 stocks which out of these, about 350 stocks are actively covered, with 100 on a watchlist, and 50 in the portfolio. The selection prioritizes stocks with promising fundamentals for mid to long-term gains, while also considering short-term technicals. This is borne out of the teams view that fundamentals predominantly drive the mid to long-term performance, while flows and technicals account for most of the short-term performance, and a change in perception often heralds the period when most of the outperformance occurs, hence their flexible approach. The portfolio construction process is directed by the Five Star Rating Framework which considers aspects including valuation, catalysts, positioning, dislocation, and ESG factors for position sizing. This builds on the teams view that the best returns are made by selecting only the very best stocks at a given point in time and sizing them correctly. There's typically around 25 names on each side of the book, though shorts are often smaller positiined so this can range up to 35. The net sits in a typical range of 0-20% with a gross around 160%.