The Dutchman beat his closest rival Ana Schmidlin by a gigantic margin of almost 11 percentage points. Bosma’s superiority mirrored that of Champions League-holders Bayern Munich in the German Bundesliga, with Bosma taking the lead right from the beginning only to extend it over time. At the end of December, Bosma led his nearest rival by a much smaller, albeit still comfortable, margin of less then 5 percentage points.
Sweet spot
The center of gravity if Bosma’s portfolio was in US equities, biotechnology and healthcare stocks, some of the best performing equity categories of 2013. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index alone rose more than 50% in 2013.
Double winner
In the first quarter of 2014 Bosma’s portfolio made a return of more than 9.5%, more than double the performance of any of his competitors. The flying Dutchman did even better in the risk-adjusted return contest. His one-year performance adjusted for volatility amounted to 27.19%. In the risk-adjusted competition, Ana Schmidlin, portfolio manager at Sankt Galler Kantonal Bank, also finished second with a performance of 15.61. Fabrice Kremer of Banque de Luxembourg came in just behind Schmidlin on the third place, with a score of 15.13.
The low-volatility prize was for Dries Stragier of BNP Paribas Fortis, who managed to keep his standard deviation down to 0.000931. His choice to invest most of his money in cash funds proved somewhat costly though, as he generated a performance of only 0.09% over the year. Ulf Berglund, head of equities at Thenberg & Kinde in Gothenburg, composed the portfolio with the highest standard deviation. Berglund’s exceptionally high standard deviation of 0.71 can be attributed to his investments in emerging europe equities and commodities. Despite his risky bets, Berglund only managed a meager return of 2.02% over the year.
