We are pleased to announce that Stairway Partners has again been recognized for its investment performance by PSN with Top Guns status. Through the fourth quarter of 2018, four of our strategy composites received a total of six awards. Most notably, the Stairway Partners Tax-Managed Conservative Asset Allocation strategy composite earned the Manager of the Decade award within PSN’s separate account database in the Global/International Balanced Universe. 2018 is the fourth consecutive year that one or more of our strategy composites received this award for ten-year performance. Additionally, Stairway’s Moderate Asset Allocation Strategy earned a Five Star award within the Global/International Balanced Universe. Our Tax-Managed Growth strategy composite received Five Star awards in both the Global/International Balanced Universe and the ETF Global Balanced Universe. Lastly, our Growth strategy composite received a Five Star award in the ETF Global Balanced Universe and a Four Star award in the Global/International Balanced Universe.
The PSN separate account database is managed by Informa Investment Solutions and is the longest-running investment manager database in North America. For their Top Guns awards, PSN ranks thousands of separately managed portfolio strategies across dozens of universes. Both PSN’s ETF Global Balanced Universe and its Global/International Balanced Universe have a style benchmark which is comprised of 60% global equities and 40% global bonds.
The Global/International Balanced Universe included 389 distinct investment strategies. To qualify for the Manager of the Decade award, a strategy must have had returns that were greater than the style benchmark for the latest ten-year period, while also maintaining a standard deviation of returns (risk) that was less than the style benchmark. PSN then ranks those strategies by their ten-year return and designates the ten best as Top Guns. To qualify for Four Star or Five Star awards, a strategy must have achieved greater returns than the style benchmark for the latest three rolling three-year periods. The Five Star award also requires a strategy to have lower risk than the median strategy in the category. In both cases, Top Guns status is awarded to the ten strategies with the best three-year performance through the fourth quarter of 2018. For the ETF Global Balanced Universe which included 227 distinct investment strategies, only the top five performers qualify for Top Guns status in each category.
We are honored to once again receive recognition from PSN for the long-term performance of our portfolios. We firmly believe that our success is the result of our commitment to a disciplined investment process, which focuses on prudent policy development, long-term fundamental capital market analysis, and efficient implementation. For more information, please contact us.
