07/28/2023 Market Notes: Your Guide Inside Market Dynamics (Intro Episode)

[Intro Music] James Hartland (00:00): Hi everyone, welcome to our first podcast, which we are going to call Market Notes. These podcasts are going to go out on a weekly basis and they are intended for clients and people who have an interest in the international marketplace and international investments to give them an update on what's happening in the markets. So just to introduce myself, I'm the Chief Executive Officer of the Astra Group and we are financial advisors who help clients manage their money around the world. James Hartland (00:38): So as financial advisors, we are responsible for helping people manage their money, whether it be investing or school fees or insurance or other aspects of their financial planning. But what we do as a company is we outsource the investment management of our business to partners who we work with, who we believe can best help our clients grow their money in the way that they would expect to grow it. James Hartland (01:05): So part of the process that we use to do this is first of all, we analyze our clients by asking them a series of questions to work out their risk profile. And then based on their risk profile and their goals, we then build portfolios for the individual clients who invest with us or this could be companies or trust funds as well. So these podcasts are basically to introduce the different fund managers that we currently work with. James Hartland (01:33): And during these podcasts, in the future, you'll hear from each of these fund managers how they are managing your money and what trends they see in the market and what changes, if any, they make to their portfolios. So from an Astra perspective, we don't use one fund manager, but we use many fund managers to build a diversified portfolio for our clients, which reduces risk by investing in many different asset classes, but gives us also access to some of the best fund managers there are in the world. How we do this is that we provide the latest technology to our investment manager, Mr. John Valdez, who looks after all investment transactions on behalf of our clients. And this technology allows him to deeply dig into the fund managers that there are out there and more specifically the ones that we use to make sure that their portfolios are in line with what our clients are looking to achieve and that he also monitors the performance and management of the funds we use to make sure that they maintain their position of James Hartland (02:47): As part of this process, Don will have regular discussions with the fund managers we use, so he understands where they're investing, the trends that they're looking at. And this helps him to also build a deep understanding of the global financial markets, which ultimately benefits Astra and our clients, because these discussions help us to spot the trends that are occurring in the markets and if necessary, rebalance clients' portfolios to make the most of the opportunities as they crop up. In a volatile and changing world, especially that we're in at the moment, where sadly there are wars and interest rates arising, the need for approach to fund management has never been greater. And we believe that our approach has minimised clients' losses during these volatile times. And as the markets pick up, our funds and the portfolios that we run for clients should benefit as they pick up faster than standard funds or investing into ETF. I'd like to introduce you now to our fund manager, Mr Don Valdis, who will speak a little bit about the partners that we work with. Don, over to you. Don Valdez (04:03): Thank you, James. As what James mentioned, we'll be featuring fund managers that we work with on this podcast. Firstly, it would be Marlboro International. Marlboro International is a part of the Marlboro Group, which has over 11 billion of assets under management. It has been managing investments for more than 30 years and earned a reputation as a leader in the world of active management. It looks after the investments of more than 200,000 private, corporate and institutional clients and works with partnerships with a growing number of financial advisors around UK and international. Don Valdez (04:31): Second, we will be featuring RBC Bruin Dolphin. It's one of the UK's leading providers of personalized discretionary wealth management services and also offering investment management and financial planning services to meet the needs of investors and intermediaries. It has been serving clients for more than 250 years and is one of the largest investment managers in the UK and Ireland. Bruin Dolphin has actually partnered with Guinness Global Investors, who is one of our management managers handling the multi-asset funds. Don Valdez (05:01): Thirdly, we have Momentum Global Investment Manager, or MGI-M, who is a global investment manager established in the UK in 1998 and has over 8.3 billion US dollars of assets under management. MGI-M is part of Momentum Metropolitan Holdings Limited, which is one of South Africa's larger life insurers and integrated financial services companies. Lastly, we will be featuring Evelyn Partners, who is also one of UK's leading integrated wealth management professional services and fund solutions provider to individuals, corporate, charities and institutions. It has over 54.4 billion pounds of assets under management and provides good advice that comes from 186 years' experience for more than 172,000 clients. Again, just a reminder that this podcast will be a weekly series, so please stay tuned. And in the meantime, please reach out to me if you have a question. Thank you. [Closing Music] [End of Podcast]