Quality as an investing style has outperformed significantly in recent years, and over the past 12 months especially so. After this kind of outperformance, it is natural to ask whether a trend is over-done and profits should be taken – and that is what we have done. When analysing the typical quality benchmarks, it quickly becomes apparent that these indices have significant industry and sector exposures, which could affect how they perform in the future and put them at risk of a down period. But the picture is also complicated by the fact “quality” is a hard factor to define, making it crucial to understand the investment process of a manager thoroughly. In our view, there are good reasons to think that quality, properly defined, could continue to do well. In particular, we think that the strong performance of quality in down markets could appeal given the weakening sentiment towards equity markets this summer. However, the issues of index composition and the shifting definition of “quality” means that an active approach is preferable to a passive we argue. In this article, we take an in-depth look at the outlook for quality, and consider a selection of trusts taking varied approaches to achieving a strong quality tilt.
