The Fidelity Research Global Equities Fund (The “Fund”) has been recognised with a ‘recommended’ rating from Lonsec, in its first report following the launch of the fund in late 2025 to offer a research-driven, systematically-managed strategy that has a long track record and a competitive fee load.
In its report, Lonsec noted that “The Fund benefits considerably from Fidelity’s vast global research capabilities” and “experienced portfolio management team that shares significant co-tenure in operating this and other systematic strategies”.
The Fidelity Research Global Equities Fund focuses on equity securities of companies in developed and emerging market countries throughout the world. The strategy provides an opportunity for investors to leverage Fidelity’s research analysts’ best stock recommendations, in a systematically constructed portfolio to mitigate factor or style biases, with the aim of delivering strong returns primarily driven by Fidelity’s stock selection capabilities. It is managed by three portfolio managers, Matt Jones, Hiten Savani and Daniel Swift.
The Fund’s investment philosophy is anchored on the belief that the consistent capture of proprietary idiosyncratic alpha from Fidelity’s global team of fundamental analysts delivers long term outperformance. Fidelity’s extensive global research platform benefits from over 50 years of investment knowledge and proprietary research that is grounded in the conviction that both overall macroeconomic trends and fundamental research can help predict the prospects of individual companies with a great degree of accuracy
Simon Glazier, managing director of Fidelity International Australia, says there has been growing interest in systematic investing approaches amongst Australian investors. “The current volatile market is one where systematic investing can be particularly attractive. As an investment approach, it allows customisation, repeatability, risk control and portfolio construction. Investors are telling us that this stable and persistent approach is very attractive in an uncertain environment. And unlike conventional passive strategies, our approach offers the potential to outperform the index by harnessing the best ideas from our global team of analysts.”
While there can be varied definitions of what systematic investing encompasses, portfolio manager Matt Jones says that Fidelity’s approach is to use strong fundamental research, systematic processes and strong portfolio construction to deliver alpha to investors. “Systematic investing can also help avoid unintentional biases, both conscious and unconscious. This includes “style-drift”, where a value bet or growth bet, or a preference for large or small caps, can creep into portfolio construction without investors realising it. In addition, we can draw on our vast set of proprietary fundamental data that no-one else has access to, based on research and analysis by Fidelity experts from around the world, over many decades. We also believe it is very important to be forward-looking, especially in the current environment, which is different to other quant-based funds,” he says.
In its report, Lonsec also noted the resourcing, saying: “The key edge over peers is the breadth of on-the-ground resourcing from Fidelity's large analyst pool for idea generation.”
