Risk/Reward
Level 10
N/A
This would include assets such a cryptocurrency/blockchain/venture capital, startups and esoteric/speculative investments, none of which are held within any of the Vanquish portfolios.
Level 9
Vanquish Technology
Technology includes emerging sectors (AI, semiconductors) and established companies (with a consumer focus), balancing high potential growth with some stability. The sector is high-risk due to its volatility and reliance on innovation, but the reward is high, driven by rapid tech advancements and a growing digital economy.
Level 8
Vanquish India
India offers significant growth potential across multiple sectors, backed by demographic trends and an expanding middle class. However, it carries geopolitical and economic risks specific to the region. The use secondary market listings coupled with investment trust diversification helps reduce risk, but the market remains emergent.
Vanquish Healthcare
This portfolio provides a balance between innovation (biotech) and more stable players (pharma, insurers and healthcare providers). While the biotech side is high-risk, driven by regulatory hurdles and trial uncertainties, the overall sector offers growth potential with relatively moderate risk due to stable, established companies.
Level 7
Vanquish Defence
Defence benefits from government contracts and long-term military needs, making it relatively stable. However, it's a niche sector tied to geopolitical tensions and political cycles, which introduces higher risk. While it offers strong growth during conflicts and increased spending, the potential for downside exists if defence budgets are reduced.
LifeStage Accelerate
Being free to draw from all stocks across the Vanquish Range and combine these with global equity tracking, Absolute Growth is a fully managed solution that lowers the risk of holding individual sectors in isolation, whilst retaining very strong exposure to high potential rewards.
Level 6
Vanquish Resources & Industry
This portfolio covers energy, metals, infrastructure and manufacturing, with diverse drivers like the transition to clean energy, urbanisation, and technological needs (e.g. semiconductors). While exposed to commodity price volatility, its broad sector approach and demand-driven growth offers moderate risk with solid long-term reward potential.
LifeStage Diversify
By beginning to reduce higher volatility stocks and increasing exposure to more established players, Balanced Growth manages Life Stage risk and volatility down a notch with minimal compromise in growth potential.
Index 100
Global index tracking offers diversification across all markets, making it lower-risk compared to the above sector-specific investments whilst still being 100% equity focused.
Level 5
LifeStage Balance & LifeStage Income
Balanced portfolios of equities, blended with index tracker and fixed interest exposure to ensure a broad spread across many sectors. The portfolios have with a strong focus on consumer goods and services with exposure to defence, resources & industry and include fixed interest for volatility management.
Index 80
Adding 20% fixed interest exposure to the Index 100 portfolio brings the risk/reward level down a notch. It is placed in the same category as Life Stage Income as whilst not being as sophisticated in its approach or having the de-risking nature of strong consumer staples holdings, it remains diversified across markets and sectors.
Level 4
Vanquish Equity
Consumer goods and services stocks are stable, driven by consistent demand for everyday products. They carry lower risk, as they tend to perform well in both good and bad economic times. This portfolio therefore provides the potential for very strong returns at a lower risk level by carefully combining the strong growth potential of consumer tech stocks with the steady returns of everyday goods and staples.
Index 60
The presence of 40% fixed interest brings the risk/reward rating of Index 60 down another notch.
Level 3
LifeStage Secure
Whilst still retaining some index tracking as a base, the direct equity exposure is now focused solely on consumer goods, services and staples and the fixed interest element increased with added money markets exposure.
Index 40
The transition point where the Index portfolios become majority fixed interest and minority equities brings the risk/reward level down to 3.
Level 2
LifeStage Defend
This portfolio's only equity exposure is defensive consumer staples and index tracking is removed altogether, replace with fixed interest and money markets.
Index 20
As with Life Stage Defend the equity exposure is now very small, though in this case through index trackers. Fixed interest makes up the balance, again utilising money markets where appropriate.
Level 1
LifeStage Reserve
The lowest risk level with 100% invested in money market cash alternatives and equivalents for a high yield with absolute minimum volatility.
Risk is always relative to each individual and dependent on the parameters in which it is being measured. It is accepted wisdom, for example, that holding shares in a single company typically carries a higher degree of risk than holding a portfolio of many different companies, but it can also be the case that one very stable stock may carry lower risk than a portfolio of very high risk companies.
To this extent we have set out below a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being the lowest level of risk/reward and 10 being the highest) and mapped each of the portfolios in the Vanquish range onto this accordingly. For a baseline, level 5 would be considered a balanced approach, level 7 would be considered an adventurous strategy and levels 8 and 9 high risk/reward.
THE VANQUISH PORTFOLIOS
Methodology
Introduction
Whilst we all seek the highest rewards, it is important that we also understand the level of risk being taken to achieve these. Risk is, of course, a subjective matter and so here we set out a simple scale of 1-10 and provide comparative ratings for each portfolio.