Generally speaking, how do financial planners understand and analyze a fund?

In fact, financial planners are normal people, and they will not look at the problem from the perspective of ordinary investors just because they are financial planners. Moreover, many financial planners themselves are high-net-worth customers and are the targets of private banking services, so financial planners should be more picky from the perspective of satisfying customers or banknotes.

Then let me talk about my own practitioners-although I can't understand the feelings of high-net-worth people for the time being (I'm sorry I haven't reached this level yet, so I will continue to work hard! )-How to learn and understand a fund and form your own judgment? Right to throw a brick to attract jade, shoot.

At present, the market's understanding of the right and wrong of the wealth management industry (various fixed-income products) is getting lower and lower, and the mainstream products will develop towards net worth in the future. I deeply agree with this point, which has been mentioned many times in previous articles. How to make the uncertainty of net value fluctuation predictable through research and analysis, and how to reduce this uncertainty has become a link for the whole industry to increase added value, and it is also the only way for financial planners to upgrade from simple salesmen to lawyers, doctors and other experts.

In my practical work experience, the process of financial planners knowing a fund can be roughly divided into:

1, understand the background. What is the composition of the investment team, what previous experience, past product performance and so on.

2. Strategic research. This is the most important part of a fund. To put it bluntly, strategy is the methodology of fund making money. Generally speaking, there are only two ways to make money: buy low and sell high and arbitrage. Traditional stock funds and bond funds make money by buying low and selling high, while most hedge funds make money by arbitrage (of course, some hedge funds are trend followers and also make money by rising/falling trends). In addition, whether the investment decision of this fund is made by people or procedures, and whether the trading frequency belongs to high/medium/low frequency is also an important aspect of the strategy.

3. Historical performance. This is the more convincing part. The longer the historical performance, the more convincing it is. However, historical performance does not represent the future, so historical performance is more used to better understand the strategic principle and understand the investment/transaction/risk control style of investment. In addition, historical performance can be divided into firm performance and retrospective performance. Backtracking means that there is no definite transaction, but the result of the transaction is simulated with the real market data in the past. At present, the historical performance of some hedge funds is not long enough, and they will use the method of backtesting to show their performance, but the reference of backtesting is often low, which is far less significant than the reference of firm offer.

4. Product terms. There is little difference in the basic terms of net worth products, and the fees also follow the general standards of the industry, generally consisting of initial subscription fee, fixed management fee (and custody fee) and floating management fee (performance commission). This part of financial planners may focus on the liquidity arrangement of products, such as the arrangement of open days and closed periods, as well as the early warning and stop-loss rules of products.

Through the above steps, the financial planner has basically established a preliminary impression of a fund. But obviously, the initial impression is often quite vague, because most products look similar, and every investor will say that he is very, very good. So how do you identify the judgment next?

A very important link in fund research is roadshow. In order to promote fund sales, general fund managers will communicate face-to-face with financial planners through field or video. Two important parts of this exchange, one is the question and answer session. In addition to selling their products to financial planners according to the prepared exquisite PPT, fund managers also need to accept questions from financial planners. The most important part of the roadshow is the questioning session. Although financial planners are kind-hearted and smiling, their questions usually go straight to the core, including strategic logic, market environment, risk control, and even the organizational structure of the company and the stability of core personnel. Moreover, there are many financial planners, and everyone's concerns are different. In addition, similar products are more common in the market. After several rounds of questions and answers, all aspects of the product information will be collected. Another link is to feel what kind of person and behavior style investors are through roadshows. This is also very important, sometimes even more important than the dry goods in the previous question and answer section, because investment is investment after all. If an investment gives people a sense of unease or lack of trust, financial planners are usually more cautious.

After the roadshow, it can be said that the initial appearance of the fund is basically over, a small number of financial planners will choose to sell, and most financial planners will choose to continue to wait and see. After the establishment of the product, if the performance of the fund is not satisfactory, the foundation will gradually become silent, and it is difficult to get the attention of financial planners; On the contrary, if the performance is outstanding or the exit control is good, the financial planner will regain interest in this fund, which is the process of re-understanding the fund.

On the second understanding, the financial planner is familiar with the basic situation of the fund and pays more attention to: 1, the reasons for the excellent performance of the company or the excellent exit control; 2. Views on current market, future prospect and operation strategy. Fund managers often take the form of dynamic communication with financial planners to answer various questions of financial planners. At the same time, in this series of interactions, financial planners can further feel the style of investors, thus further forming a judgment on the level of investors. After this link, the financial planner's impression of investment is gradually rich and vivid. Investment is also a person. No matter what major you are engaged in, you will have your own professional and value judgment. Specific to the product, it will be reflected as follows: some investment positions are very flexible, and when the market is good, they will increase their positions and reduce their positions, while others think that as long as there is no problem with the target they take, they will stay put and let the market fluctuate; Some people love gambling a little, while others are conservative, preferring to miss rather than do anything wrong ... These different behavior patterns are not right or wrong, but they are actually reflected in the net performance of products, which will further affect the feelings of investors.

At this point, the image of an investment in the minds of financial planners gradually became clear and became a person with different preferences. Described in technical terms, this is called identifying investment style. Well, this is the core of this paper, that is, the most important part of fund research is to identify the style of fund managers, because historical performance is not necessarily sustainable, but the investment style is sustainable. Only by identifying the style can we effectively judge the future performance of investment, thus reducing the uncertainty of products to some extent.

Therefore, if it is necessary to say that financial planners look at funds differently from ordinary people, the biggest difference may be that financial managers are more concerned about the style of investment and whether it drifts, while ordinary people are more concerned about which fund is more profitable. In other words, financial planners pay more attention to "cause" and ordinary people pay more attention to "effect", but there is no cause and effect. This is not to say that the financial planner's realm is higher, but that as long as he makes investments, he will make mistakes. The difference between a master and a rookie is that he makes many mistakes and doesn't make fatal mistakes. Don't rush to deny a reliable fund manager because of one or two mistakes, and don't rush to give money to a fund manager who is not suitable for you because of one or two mistakes. That's all that matters.