Standard Life Investments

How we invest

We base our investment approach on our Focus on Change philosophy, which recognizes that different factors drive markets at different times in the investment cycle. It is not inherently growth or value biased or necessarily momentum driven. This means that we have an opportunity to outperform throughout the cycle.

Our Focus on Change investment philosophy seeks to identify and understand the most important factors that drive the market price of an investment and the dynamics behind these drivers. This focus is supplemented by analysis of what is priced into an investment - what are the key drivers of the price and what expectations for these drivers are currently priced in. We then focus on what’s changing and whether these changes may lead to revised market expectations and hence to a revised price.

The fixed interest team is supported by the latest technology. One of the key tools we have developed to monitor credit quality is our proprietary credit scoring model, the Credit Matrix. It plays a crucial role in prioritizing our research agenda by highlighting stocks that may require deeper analysis. In practice, the Credit Matrix has been helpful in the early identification of companies that have subsequently experienced financial difficulties.

The final stage of our process is deciding which holdings to choose. This decision is based on macroeconomic trends and the portfolio managers’ fundamental analysis of bonds and the companies and governments that issue them. In all cases, we seek to build well diversified portfolios that can harvest the benefits of our investment insight.

 

This material is not intended as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, and it is not provided as sales or advertising communication and does not constitute investment advice.

Products and services described herein are provided by Standard Life Investments, its subsidiaries, affiliates or related companies.

The information provided is for informational purposes only and serves to provide general information to clients and is not meant to be legal or tax advice for any particular investor, which can only be provided by qualified tax and legal counsel.

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