AFL Investments hosts free seminar on innovative investment strategy

THURSDAY, MAY 19: AFL Investments today announces that it has secured a speaker from the global leader and award-winning index manager, Research Affiliates, to share the secrets of its revolutionary investment technique in Bermuda. AFL Investments will be hosting a free public seminar about this topic on Thursday, June 2, 2011 from 12:00 noon until 1.30 p.m.

 At the event, Doug Gratz CFA, a senior member of the Research Affiliates team, will provide details about the company’s innovative and patented fundamental indexing technique, Research Affiliates Fundamental Index (RAFI), which can be used to enhance the efficiency of investment portfolios.

Launched in 2005, RAFI has grown to include approximately $69 billion in assets. Research Affiliates attributes the success of RAFI to its ability to address the shortcomings of other indexing methods that are weighted according to the total market value of their outstanding shares, while maintaining the benefits of a broad market base. RAFI breaks the link between market price and the weight of the stock in the index. RAFI instead selects and weights stock for inclusion on the basis of fundamental criteria used to assess the quality of a company’s financials, such as sales, cash flow, dividends and book value, which removes the influence of market subjectivity and emotion.

According to Research Affiliates, RAFI outperforms its capitalisation-weighted counterparts on average by two to three per cent per annum and consistently achieves better returns across all industry and geographic sectors, as well as in rising and falling markets.

Cindy Campbell, Chief Operating Officer of AFL Investments, says: “We are delighted to welcome Research Affiliates to the island to advise local investors about the benefits of including RAFI in their portfolios over other indexes, which can overweight overvalued stocks and underweight undervalued stocks. Given the outperformance that RAFI has delivered over its competitors, any investor with an allocation to traditional equity indexes should join us for this event to find out more about this alternative tool directly from its founders.”

The public event will be held in The Argus Training Centre in the new Argus Building at 14 Wesley Street in Hamilton. As space is strictly limited, interested individuals should register by emailing [email protected] or calling 294-5715 by May 30. A light lunch will be provided.

RAFI indexes are available locally through AFL Investments in multiple classes, including U.S. Large Cap, U.S. Small Cap, Pan-Europe, Japan, Global and Emerging Markets. Research Affiliates, which developed RAFI, is headquartered in Newport Beach, California.