Ibbotson International Shares High Opportunities - Axiom

Axiom        

Investment Style: Growth (Global)

Axiom International Investors (Axiom) is located in Greenwich, Connecticut, and is 100.0 percent employee-owned and managed by its staff. Axiom was established in September 1998 by Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer Andrew Jacobson.

Axiom is an active, growth-oriented global equities fund manager. The firm believes that the single most important determinant of a company's share price performance relative to the performance of comparable alternative investments is whether the company is able to demonstrate better than generally anticipated progress in its key business drivers. These are defined broadly to include a wide variety of factors that could have a significant impact on the short- and long-term financial performance of the enterprise.

Axiom is an aggressive growth manager with a mid- to small-cap bias. The firm typically has exposure to emerging markets, so that its preferred benchmark is the MSCI All Countries World Index.

Axiom's investment process involves three key steps: screening, key business driver analysis, and portfolio construction.

The fund manager first screens the universe of approximately 5,000 stocks for three factors: a minimum market-cap of US$250.0 million, coverage by three or more sellside brokerage analysts, and liquidity of over US$1.0 million each day.

For each security, analysts identify and track key fundamental drivers that could have a significant impact on the company's short- and long-term financial performance, broadly-defined as company-specific, industry, secular trends, macroeconomic, and country.

Analysts then attempt to identify in advance the likelihood that a company will meet, exceed, or underperform the level of earnings expected by the consensus. Like primary market researchers, analysts seek and find information and data not traditionally sourced by the average market participant to form opinions.

Analysts then assign companies ratings from A to E on the basis of the company and industry's competitive position (where A is a well-established company in a well-established industry, and E is an emerging company in an emerging industry). A company is also assigned a dynamism rating based on the likelihood of exceeding, matching, or underperforming earnings guidance. A stock's portfolio weight is determined subjectively, but consideration is given to the combination of the two ratings and its relative risk/return payoff.

Axiom has two key investment personnel for global portfolios (Chief Investment Officer Andrew Jacobson and global shares portfolio manager Bradley Amoils), and a team of analysts based in Greenwich, Connecticut.