When American Century decided to outsource its portfolio commentary, it looked for someone who had a strong track record writing regulatory shareholder reports. Impressed by Eve’s skill and experience, the head of financial writing offered Eve an ongoing role working on the firm’s value equity funds – more than 30 retail, institutional and sub-advised portfolios. To write annual and semi-annual commentary, Eve reviews performance attribution and works directly with the portfolio management teams.
“[Eve] has become an integral part of our financial writing function. She is professional, responsive, and can always be counted on to come through for us. . . . Her involvement frees my financial writing team to focus on other projects. Eve’s delivery of high-quality work – always on schedule – ensures we fulfill our commitments to clients and meet our regulatory deadlines. She gets outstanding marks from everyone here at American Century and I recommend her without reservation.”
Anastasia Rock
Vice President, Client Communications
American Century Investments
Kansas City, MO, USA
American Century Investments
Writing quarterly commentary on a tight turnaround.
Eve writes quarterly commentary for American Century’s value equity funds (more than 30 retail, institutional and sub-advised portfolios). Working entirely from performance attribution, she drafts the narratives and refines them based on feedback from the portfolio management teams.
“As a writer myself, I especially appreciate Eve’s ability to get to the heart of the matter while preserving the quality of the communication. . . . Eve has consistently met our challenging deadlines and despite a complex reporting process with many last-minute changes, she maintains her sense of humor. Eve fits our team like a glove, and we greatly appreciate her contribution.”
Gunnar Hughes
Investment Writer
American Century Investments
Kansas City, MO, USA
Delaware Investments
Writing annual fixed income commentary.
Delaware Investments asked Eve to write annual shareholder commentary for equity and fixed income funds. She supplements information gathered in telephone interviews with her own research about the economy and the markets.
Epoch Investment Partners
Adding value to the quarterly reporting process.
Excerpt from
All Cap Value Performance Analysis4th Quarter 2006
Epoch Investment Partners
For the quarter ending December 31, 2006, Epoch’s All Cap Value strategy returned 7.1%, matching the return of the Russell 3000 Index. For the year, it was up 16.2% versus 15.7% for the Russell 3000.
The market rally, which began in response to the Federal Reserve’s August decision to pause in its string of rate hikes, turned into a full-blown frenzy during the fourth quarter. What had looked like a relatively good year for the stock market turned into an excellent one. Indeed, the appreciation of your portfolio and both indexes during the fourth quarter boosted annual returns by more than 60%.
Because of our emphasis on economically sensitive stocks, we were well-positioned for the rally. Still, its magnitude was difficult to match. As you know, we choose stocks that generate consistent and growing free cash flow. Total return is a result of the intelligent use of that cash to either grow the business or return value to shareholders over a market cycle. Given our preference for consistency over financial and economic leverage, our investments tend to do well in most environments – except for speculative rallies when expanding P/E ratios tend to drive returns. The fourth quarter saw such a speculative rally; a 7% return is only achieved by P/E expansion because earnings (cash flow) and dividends (shareholder yield) do not grow that quickly in three months.
We believe that by December 31st the market had become overly optimistic about a “Goldilocks” economic scenario, in which both GDP and inflation moderate to a “just right” level and the Fed begins making interest-rate cuts to reignite economic growth. The “Goldilocks” scenario seems unlikely to us.
For the quarter and the full year, our position in Materials contributed to performance. Most of the stocks we hold in this sector are “late cycle” cyclicals, which we selected in anticipation of good performance at this point in the economic cycle. Our overweight to the sector also added to returns as Materials companies experienced very strong demand during the quarter. However, a solid effort in Consumer Staples during the fourth quarter was not enough to turn around our performance in that sector for the full year.
Because of strong stock selection, our holdings within the Consumer Discretionary and Information Technology sectors had the largest positive effect on results for the year. In Consumer Discretionary, we favored leisure/entertainment companies in gaming, media and gambling over retail/consumer goods companies, which was a successful strategy. Although our allocation to Information Technology detracted from performance in the fourth quarter, our position significantly outperformed for the year. While each of our holdings has a different investment thesis, our companies generally benefited either from corporate spending increases or consumer product cycles. Most of the companies own valuable intellectual property, which results in greater profitability than their peers’ more commoditized product offerings.
With no dedicated staff to manage the quarterly commentary process, an investment firm can find itself scrambling to produce timely communications for clients. Epoch Investment Partners, a boutique investment manager, approached Eve for assistance. The cornerstone of her contribution was an editorial calendar detailing everyone’s responsibilities. By the sixth business day after quarter end, Eve received copy about the firm’s strategies along with performance attribution reports. Then she created three separate commentaries, using the attribution to ensure that everything necessary was covered.
Goldman Sachs Asset Management
Putting best practices to work.
Seeking a fresh perspective, Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) asked Eve to work with some of its portfolio management teams to craft commentaries that would more easily receive legal approval. One of the reasons GSAM turned to Eve was her experience with the portfolio commentary process at other financial firms and mutual fund companies. The head of marketing wanted Eve to bring her knowledge of the industry’s best practices to the initiative. After her success with some of the firm’s quantitative equity portfolios, GSAM expanded Eve’s role to include more of its mutual funds, including some of their bond funds.
JPMorgan Asset Management
Writing bond market commentaries that are meaningful to investors.
Commentaries are always written on a tight deadline. To speed the process, writers – frequently the portfolio managers themselves – will take shortcuts into jargon. Eve was asked to create commentaries, some as brief as 225 words, that were informative and reader-friendly. She quickly became a favorite of many portfolio managers, not only because she made the process relatively painless for them, but because she had the ability to take complex information, identify what was most important, and write copy that accurately presented the facts.
“I can’t tell you how much I valued Eve’s efficiency and effectiveness. She took a load off my shoulders and gave me peace of mind in the midst of the pressures I faced in coordinating the [shareholder and quarterly] reporting process. If you are in a position to work with Eve, do. She’ll make your life much easier.”
Darlene Eng
Former Marketing Manager
JPMorgan Asset Management
New York, NY, USA
MTB Investment Advisors
Interviewing the Chief Investment Officer about the economy and the financial markets.
Investors want perspective on the path of the U.S. economy and the performance of the equity and fixed income markets. They especially value the insights and opinions of those who manage their money. Eve put together a list of questions and spoke with William F. Dwyer, President and Chief Investment Officer of MTB Investment Advisors. She then edited the transcript of their conversation, creating a Q&A that appeared in the firm’s magazine, Financial Focus and also as a standalone piece.
YMCA Retirement Fund
Educating plan participants about their investments.
The financial markets remain confusing to many investors. With more than 60,000 participants, the YMCA Retirement Fund faced a challenge to make sure their investors received a broad understanding of the markets and how the fund's managers made decisions. Eve was asked to write a quarterly market review for the Fund’s newsletter, Personal Finance. To prepare to write each article, she spoke with the managers of both the equity and fixed-income portfolios. Personal Finance won an Award of Merit in Publications Newsletters/Magazines/Magapapers from the New York chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).
“Eve is a skilled writer. She takes complex financial concepts and explains them in clear, easy-to-understand language. Our readers, many of whom are novices when it comes to investing, enjoy our newsletter. That’s why I keep hiring Eve issue after issue.”
John V. Carney
Former Director of Communications
YMCA Retirement Fund
New York, NY, USA