High-profile investor Geoff Wilson believes the next six months will be be difficult for the sharemarket, and is hoping to use the weakness to build the portfolio of his fund's new large cap-oriented listed investment company.
"In terms of the overall market, it's going to be a difficult six months, because we are in a very mature bull market in the US," Mr Wilson told Fairfax Media after the listing of the WAM Leaders Fund on Monday.
The fund's investment philosophy is to look for growth-oriented companies that are undervalued. But Mr Wilson agreed growth is harder to find in the present market conditions, and the lack of earnings growth as a driver for the recent rally "makes you nervous".
"The overall economy has slowed and the next couple of months is going to be difficult for the domestic economy until the election is over and that uncertainty is over," he said.
WAM Leaders raised $394.3 million during its initial public offer. Mr Wilson said it would take up to three or four months to finalise the investments in the fund.
But he said he was hopeful the weakness over the next six months would provide an opportunity to snap up some value.
"The old adage 'sell in May and go away' may hold true again this year. This would work well for us. We've got $394 million to invest in the market. Obviously it would be nice if the markets held off a bit," he said.
While the WAM Leaders Fund will invest in the top 200, it will avoid the top 20 blue chip stocks, which includes, among others, the big four banks, BHP Billiton and Telstra, and retailers Wesfarmers and Woolworths. Mr Wilson said the best value could be found in the 100 to 200 end of the index.
"There will be a time to own the banks and a time to own Woolworths, but we don't think the time is now," Mr Wilson said.
Indeed, the fund itself resulted from the demand from the 25,000 strong, largely retail shareholder base in WAM's established LICs, mainly WAM Capital.
"Probably more so over the past 12 months a lot of our shareholders have been saying 'can you manage some large cap money for me'," Mr Wilson said.
"Historically the retail investor would own the banks, maybe own Woolworths and Telstra and maybe BHP or Rio. It's been a difficult period for all those companies," he said.
"The retail investors have been losing money over the past 12 months by investing in these companies."
The fund would instead look at companies benefiting from the lower Australian dollar – Mr Wilson noted the strong run of Aristocrat, one of WAM's investments – US dollar earners, and mining services.
"Also an area we like is telecommunications, the likes of TPG and Vocus Communications, that are benefiting from rationalisation in the sector," he said.
"Each of their acquisitions and the rationalisation benefits seem to be better than the market had initially anticipated for both companies."
WAM Leaders listed at an issue price of $1.10 a share. In early afternoon trade, it was buying $1.08; however, that did not include the 4¢ option each IPO participant received.
The IPO broke the $378 million record for an LIC raising set by Magellan Global Equities Fund last year.
