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The investment house’s structure is flat and integrated, allowing it to be highly interactive. It’s pretty normal in the interface for the chairman to be two metres away from the junior analyst.
Major reasons for this approach is that it allows skills to be transferred between people. Knowledge and ideas flow freely between teams and thus results in the best ideas being used across portfolios.
Ronell van Rooyen, Head of Portfolio Management, says: “Risk is defined in different ways by different people, but to Prescient it’s not meeting our client’s requirements.
“If we say that we’re not going to lose money over, say, a 12-month period, it doesn’t mean that we’ll try not to do that – it means that we won’t lose money over a 12-month period. Our clients trust us, because they know that when they give us a mandate, we’ll follow that mandate. They know that Prescient will meet or exceed what they expect us to do.”
Prescient always focuses on risk-adjusted returns. There’s no point in taking crazy risks for limited returns. It always looks at the range of outcomes whether it thinks they are going to happen or not.
The simple reason is that you just don’t know what’s going to happen. Prescient has outcomes which it thinks are more likely than others, but avoids situations where an outcome is likely to affect portfolios adversely.
The house makes extensive use of derivatives, both in fixed income and equity space, to ensure that it manages its downside. But it still manages downside in a way that it can produce upside.
Major reasons for this approach is that it allows skills to be transferred between people. Knowledge and ideas flow freely between teams and thus results in the best ideas being used across portfolios.
Ronell van Rooyen, Head of Portfolio Management, says: “Risk is defined in different ways by different people, but to Prescient it’s not meeting our client’s requirements.
“If we say that we’re not going to lose money over, say, a 12-month period, it doesn’t mean that we’ll try not to do that – it means that we won’t lose money over a 12-month period. Our clients trust us, because they know that when they give us a mandate, we’ll follow that mandate. They know that Prescient will meet or exceed what they expect us to do.”
Prescient always focuses on risk-adjusted returns. There’s no point in taking crazy risks for limited returns. It always looks at the range of outcomes whether it thinks they are going to happen or not.
The simple reason is that you just don’t know what’s going to happen. Prescient has outcomes which it thinks are more likely than others, but avoids situations where an outcome is likely to affect portfolios adversely.
The house makes extensive use of derivatives, both in fixed income and equity space, to ensure that it manages its downside. But it still manages downside in a way that it can produce upside.
