According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Regal Funds Management's Atlantic Absolute Return Fund has increased its net assets by 74% through May. Unfortunately for most of us, this fund is only available to institutional investors and requires a minimum $250,000 initial investment. But we can still take a look at some of the funds' winners and see how things are done in the big end of town.
Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P)
Zip Co is probably most famous for being a 'buy now, pay later' rival to WAAAX darling Afterpay Touch Group Ltd (ASX: APT), but the rival service clearly has a lot going for it in its own right. Zip shares are up 177% year-to-date (YTD) alone (outperforming Afterpay) and Regal has been a long-time investor – ensuring it is making money hand over fist on Zip Co.
Fortescue Metals Group Limited (ASX: FMG)
Regal's Chief Investment Officer Philip King has said that Fortescue is his favourite iron miner and looks to have made a pretty successful bet on iron prices – Fortescue shares are another big winner in 2019 so far, with the iron ore miner up 106.5% YTD. Fortescue has managed to return a lot of cash to investors as it takes extra cream off the top of the rising iron ore price, so this has been a slam-dunk for Regal.
Appen Ltd (ASX: APX)
Appen shares are up a whopping 116% in 2019 so far and have been one of the best performers on the ASX YTD. Appen's business of creating machine learning datasets is right in the middle of one of the strongest tailwinds on global markets – artificial intelligence. This has positioned the company to make enormous profits well into the future as it works with tech giants like Apple, Alphabet (Google) and Facebook.
Foolish takeaway
Although it is sometimes painful reading about how much money other people are making on the stock market, there are always lessons to be learned. Regal is a fund manager that clearly knows how to pick a trend and an early winner – the holy grail of growth investing. Growth investors out there should take some notes.
