Fifty-eight funds. Every figure read out of the fund's own marketing document —
and where a document does not state something, this page says so rather than filling the gap.
The gaps turn out to be the story.
These are the documents an investor in Singapore is handed: mostly offered to accredited
investors, a few to the retail public. Nothing here is sourced from outside the documents and nothing is
estimated.
Almost every one of these documents leads with a return. Barely a third disclose the
volatility that produced it, a quarter disclose a maximum drawdown, and more than half never say
what kind of return the headline number is. An internal rate of return, a NAV-to-NAV total return
and a cumulative figure are three different measurements. Printed side by side without labels, they
read as one.
And nearly half of these track records contain performance that did not happen —
back-tests, pro-forma months, a predecessor vehicle, or another share class spliced in. In every case
it is disclosed. In almost every case it is disclosed in a footnote, beneath a chart that shows the
combined line as though it were one continuous history.
02Return and volatility
What each fund returned, and what it cost in volatility
Named, and ranked by return. Only 17 of the 58 print both a return and a
volatility, and most of those are hedge funds — so this is not a picture of the market, it is a picture of
the corner of it that discloses. Each row is one fund: the solid dot is its annualised return, the grey
dot is its annualised volatility, and the bar between them is the gap. Both figures exactly as printed.
A long bar to the right means the fund returned far more
than it moved about. A long bar to the left means the opposite — the year-to-year swing was larger
than the gain. Note that the most volatile fund in the set returns the least of any of them, and the
least volatile returns more than it does. Whatever else this shows, it is not a ladder of more risk buying
more return.
A liquid fund's NAV is set by a market; a private-market fund's is
struck by its own manager from unlisted holdings — several of these documents say their valuations are
"generally not reflective of broad liquid market sentiments" or are made "internally each month". Those two
volatilities are not the same measurement, which is why the dots are coloured apart. And the hollow rings
are records built partly from performance that did not happen.
What does the volatility figure actually mean?
It is the typical size of the swing around the average, per year. A fund returning 10%
a year with 3% volatility mostly lands somewhere between 7% and 13%. The same 10% with 25% volatility
mostly lands between −15% and +35%. Same average, completely different experience of owning it.
The rough rule is that about two years in three fall within one volatility of the average, and about
nineteen years in twenty fall within two.
Two funds in this set make the point. Winfield Global returned 21.8% a year with 2.6%
volatility — a narrow, steady band. Neuberger Berman's connectivity fund returned 10.7% with 26.4% —
its typical year runs anywhere from a 16% loss to a 37% gain. It earned half as much and moved ten
times as much.
One warning that matters more than the arithmetic. Volatility is calculated from the
fund's own reported prices. Where those prices come from a market, the figure means what it says.
Where the manager sets them each month from assets that do not trade — every private credit, private
equity, infrastructure and secondaries fund here — a low volatility is partly a statement about the
valuation policy, not about the risk. That is why the private credit fund on this chart shows 1.5%.
It is not calmer than a government bond; it is simply not being priced by anyone else.
03Asset classes
What kind of fund each one is
Six kinds of thing are being sold here, ranked by the median annualised return of the
funds in each group that state one. The two faded bars rest on a single fund each — one of the four
infrastructure funds and one of the two secondaries funds print a return at all, so those are not medians
in any real sense. Read the whole chart as a rough level, not a league table: these groups behave
differently enough that comparing across them is usually a mistake, and a private credit fund's 1%
volatility and a macro fund's 25% are not two points on one scale.
Private credit lends to companies; private equity buys them; private
infrastructure owns roads, grids and data centres; secondaries buys second-hand stakes in
other private funds. All four hold assets that do not trade, so their prices are set by the manager.
Hedge funds here covers multi-strategy, macro, long/short and single-strategy vehicles, which
mostly trade listed instruments. Public equity is listed shares.
04The funds
All 58 funds
Click a fund name to open its full record — structure, fees, liquidity terms and every
flag found in its document. Click a column heading to sort; the heading row stays put as you scroll.
An em dash means the document does not state it. The minimum filter starts at $100k and under —
press All to see every fund.
How to read the Bought through and Open to columns
Bought through is the platform the document itself names
as the route in — the feeder's sponsor, the named distributor or placement agent, or the branding on the
page. Where a platform appears only in the recipient watermark stamped on the pages, it is shown
underneath in grey and marked, because that stamp records who the copy was released to rather than who
is authorised to sell the fund. Twenty-seven of the fifty-eight name no platform anywhere.
Open to is who the document says may invest.
Retail means the fund is authorised for sale to the general public. Accredited is
Singapore's threshold under the Securities and Futures Act — broadly, net personal assets above S$2
million, or S$1 million in financial assets, or income above S$300,000 in the past year; it is opt-in,
and opting in gives up some of the protections a retail investor keeps. Professional and
institutional are stricter and come from other rulebooks — Hong Kong's professional investor,
Europe's professional client, the American qualified purchaser. Because those definitions come from
different regimes rather than one ladder, a fund marked professional here is not straightforwardly
"one rung above" one marked accredited; it means its document addressed a different rulebook. Ranked
loosely by how restrictive they are: Retail 4, Accredited 28, Professional 18, and 8 that never say.
Asset class
Minimum
Platform
Fund
Asset class
Bought through
Open to
Ann. return
Basis
Vol
Max DD
Minimum
Record
05Concentration
Is it actually diversified?
Share of the 58 funds that state each thing you would need in order to answer that
question for yourself.
state a beta — the one figure that says how much of a fund's movement is simply
the stock market moving. It is what would settle the question.
state a top-10 concentration — what share of the money sits in the ten largest
positions.
For most of these funds, you cannot tell.
What is a beta, and why does it settle the question?
Beta answers one question: when the stock market moves 1%, how much does this fund move?
A beta of 1.0 means it moves with the market — you are holding the market. 0.5 means half as much.
0 means the two have nothing to do with each other. A negative beta means it tends to move the opposite
way. It is the single number that tells you whether you have bought something genuinely different or
the same index in a more expensive wrapper.
Two funds here show both ends. The Neuberger Berman connectivity fund states a beta of
1.31 — it moves a third more than the market, in the same direction, so it is a leveraged version
of the thing you already own. The GAM private shares fund states −0.02 against its own
benchmark, which is as close to unrelated as it gets.
Beta always has to be measured against something, and the document has to say what. A beta
against a hedge fund index means something completely different from a beta against the S&P 500. Of
the seven funds here that state one, the reference index is not always given.
What most documents do give you is a holdings count, and it is worth reading carefully,
because the unit changes from fund to fund. One fund's "295 holdings" are sponsor-backed loans. Another's
"20 holdings" are pre-IPO companies. Another's "10" are other hedge funds, each holding hundreds of
positions underneath. And one fund's "25" are strategies, not positions at all. The column below says
what is being counted, in each document's own words.
Where a sector split is given, the technology share is shown. It is stated by
twenty funds, and among those it runs from 5% to 84%, median 20.5% — so "alternative"
on the cover does not, on its own, tell you the fund is not a technology bet.
Asset class
Minimum
Fund
Asset class
Holdings
Counting what
Top 10
Largest
In tech
Beta
Public equity
Benchmark
06US exposure
Away from US stocks — who actually is?
Two questions decide whether a fund is real diversification or the same bet in a
different wrapper. What does it hold — securities that trade on a market, or private assets that
do not? And where does the money go — is the United States still the answer? Every fund below is
placed by what its own document states. Nothing is inferred from the manager's reputation, and a fund
that only says "global" is placed in the "global, not broken down" row rather than guessed at.
are US-centred on their own numbers — a stated US or North America weight above
half, or an explicitly American mandate. A US benchmark on its own does not count.
are clearly not. That is the honest size of the "away from America" shelf in
this set of documents.
The private-markets funds are the most American thing here, not the least.
Fifteen of the twenty US-centred funds hold unlisted assets — private credit,
private equity, infrastructure, secondaries. They are sold as an alternative to the stock market, and in
one narrow sense they are: their prices do not move with it, because their prices are set monthly by the
manager rather than by anyone trading them. But the money is lent to and invested in American companies.
A recession in the United States reaches them. It just reaches them later, and through a valuation
committee rather than a ticker.
Leaving the US stock market and buying US private credit is a change of liquidity, not a
change of country. Whether that is what you want is a separate question — but it is worth knowing which
one you are buying.
A dagger (†) marks a fund that measures itself
against a US index without stating any US exposure. A benchmark is a comparator, not a holding, so it is
never enough on its own to place a fund in the top row — GAM's private shares fund is benchmarked to
MSCI Small Cap USA and reports a beta of −0.02 to it. Read the rows downward, not as a ranking.
Global, not broken down is not a verdict — it means the document claims a global mandate and never
publishes the split, so the reader cannot check it. Given that world equity indices are roughly
two-thirds American by value, a "global" fund that shows you nothing is more likely to sit near the top
row than the bottom one. Doesn't say means no geography, no mandate and no benchmark anywhere in
the document.
07Reading a factsheet
What to check on any factsheet
Drawn from the patterns that recur across all 58 funds.
08What gets disclosed
What a factsheet is likely to tell you
Share of the 58 funds that state each field. Reading down the list is reading the
order in which the industry stops being specific.
09How this was built
Method
Each document was put through five steps: classify what the file is;
extract a fixed set of 34 fields; label the basis of every number; flag anything
presented in a way that could mislead; and compile. Nothing is sourced from outside the
documents, nothing is estimated, and where a field is absent the record says so.
On the platform column. A fund is listed against a platform only where its
document names that platform in a distributing role — as the issuer of the feeder vehicle, the named
distributor or placement agent, the subscription route, or the branding on the document itself. Where
a platform appears only in the recipient watermark stamped on the pages, it is shown in grey and marked,
because that stamp records who the document was released to and not who is authorised to sell the fund.
Twenty-seven of the fifty-eight name no platform at all.
On the eligibility column. Taken from the document's own audience statement or
investor-eligibility term, not from disclaimer boilerplate — the sentence "not available to retail
investors" is evidence against retail access, not for it. Where a document lists several tiers, the
least restrictive one actually offered to is shown.
This is a study of disclosure, not of manager quality. A fund that discloses little may
be excellent; a fund that discloses everything may be poor. The point is that the second can be
assessed and the first cannot.