Focused, Long/Short Equities Investing
“By investing both long and short,
we not only give ourselves the
opportunity to add value with
active management, but we can
also provide for significantly less
volatility than the overall market.
Over a full market cycle, our
goal is to achieve broad equity
index-like returns with less risk.
So, adding this fund to a portfolio
helps investors achieve greater
diversification while offering the
potential for attractive returns.”
— Connor Browne
Investor Benefits
The fund offers:
- A liquid alternative option to complement a diversified portfolio.
- A risk management discipline, which may help lower volatility over time.
- Low correlation to equity markets to enhance an overall portfolio’s diversification.
- Thornburg’s active, focused investment selection process we have applied to all of our products since 1984.
Our Distinct Investment Approach
Thornburg Long/Short Equity Fund is a natural extension of our bottom-up security selection process, which is flexible, collaborative, and far from the herd.
Applying the same firm-wide discipline in how we think and invest differently to a focused long/ short strategy, we strive to simultaneously mitigate risk while increasing the potential for greater total return. Through active security selection, we hope to generate full market cycle returns similar to the S&P 500 Index, but with less volatility, while delivering positive outcomes within both the long and short sides of the portfolio.
Conviction in Undervalued Companies
The fund ideally takes long positions in investments that we believe will grow over time, and which are trading below their long-term value. To construct this side of the portfolio, we categorize long equity positions in three categories:
- Growth Industry Leaders: Firms with top positions in growing markets.
- Consistent Growers: Companies that exhibit steady earnings or revenue growth, or both.
- Emerging Growth Companies: Names that are addressing a new market or carving out a niche in an existing one.
Opportunities in Overvalued Firms
The fund generally takes short positions in investments that we believe are overvalued (or to hedge against the fund’s long exposures). Here too, we apply a three-basket portfolio construct to categorize the fundamentals that we think make such companies short-sale candidates:
- Cycle Victims: Cyclical companies that could be facing deteriorating industry dynamics or risks specific to the company or industry.
- Stumbling Stalwarts: Firms that once exhibited steady earnings or revenue growth, but that we expect to decline due to technological changes, weakening business economics, or other factors.
- Falling Stars: Fast growing businesses with premium valuations that we expect to decline because of approaching market saturation, increasing competition, or other factors.
Our Long/Short Investment Approach
- Actively allocating the fund’s portfolio between long and short positions is designed to pursue long-term capital appreciation and lower volatility relative to broad equity indexes.
- Typically, the fund will invest more in long positions than shorts.
- Because it’s an active focused strategy, the fund will typically hold only about 30-40 names long and short.