SOUNDINGS

A daily reading of the South African investment case

The read, 29 Oct 2026

Fixed Investment (GFCF) as % of GDP D2
13.70%
Bullish
SA–US 10-Year Yield Spread X1c
374bps
Neutral

Your funds D9

Of the six unit trusts you hold, which has grown most — and which has grown most steadily — over the window in view?

Horizon

Which fund has grown most — and which most steadily? D9

Each fund set to 100 at the left edge of the window, so every horizon asks the same question of the same starting line. Change the horizon and the base moves with it: the five-year view is your January 2022 chart, the three-month view is this quarter’s. Two plots, grouped the way you asked on 20 September — the funds meant to grow your capital above, the two meant to pay you an income below. The global feeder sits with the balanced funds because that is what it is: a multi-asset growth fund that invests offshore. The grey line is the yardstick you asked for — the average South African multi-asset high-equity fund, which is the peer group Allan Gray measures itself against.

Growth of 100 — the funds that grow your capital rebased to 100 at the start of the window — total return, except where the line says price only
Allan Gray BalancedHSBC Balanced (Acc C), in randInvestec FR Balanced FoF (B) — price onlyInvestec FR World Axis Core Feeder (B)SA Multi Asset High Equity average
100150200AG Bal184.3sector162.0HSBC156.4FR WA Core149.4FR Bal141.320222023202420252026
Growth of 100 — the funds that pay you an income NAV, rebased to 100 at the start of the window — price only, NOT what you earned
Investec FR Active Income FoF (B) — price onlyInvestec FR Enhanced Income (A) — price only
98100102104106FR Act Inc106.5FR Enh Inc100.220222023202420252026

Grouped by what each fund is for — and that grouping hides one thing, so here it is in words. Most of these lines are total return: income reinvested, the basis you confirmed on 6 September and the basis every fact sheet quotes. Allan Gray publishes it directly, back to 1999. The HSBC fund is an accumulation class, so it never distributes and its price already is its total return; it is drawn in rand, as you asked, which means its line carries the rand as well as the fund and begins 31 Dec 2015, where our exchange-rate record starts. The World Axis feeder has declared nothing at any date on its fact sheet, so for that fund the price is the total return too. Not so FR Bal. That fund pays income out twice a year, and a published NAV drops by the declared amount the day it does — so its line is drawn on price alone and sits below where the fund belongs, by roughly every distribution since the base date. On a five-year window that is not a rounding difference: in 2025 alone FR Bal priced +16.1% against a fund return of 18.8%. Until we hold the declarations, read that line as a floor, not as a ranking — and read the year-by-year chart below, which is on the same footing for every fund. The lower plot is price alone throughout. These two pay their income out monthly, which is the whole point of owning them, so the line understates them almost completely — an income fund that distributes everything it earns draws as a flat line forever. In 2025 the gap was this wide: FR Act Inc priced +2.2% against a fund return of 10.4%; FR Enh Inc priced -0.1% against a fund return of 6.8% — everything between the two numbers is money that reached you rather than value the fund lost. Read their level, not their slope. What changed on 6 September. You asked what other options there were for getting the history, and there was one we had missed: ProfileData's FundsData Online publishes every South African unit trust price, one day at a time, back to each fund's launch — free and without asking anyone. Five of your six now have a real record, the Investec funds from their own inceptions instead of a line that began in September. It agreed with Fundrock's own file to the cent on the one day both cover, which is why nothing already stored had to be revised.

Table view — Growth of 100 — the funds that grow your capital
DateAllan Gray BalancedHSBC Balanced (Acc C), in randInvestec FR Balanced FoF (B) — price onlyInvestec FR World Axis Core Feeder (B)SA Multi Asset High Equity average
29 Oct 2026—156.4———
28 Oct 2026—156.0141.3149.4—
27 Oct 2026—155.8140.5147.5—
26 Oct 2026—155.1140.2147.8—
23 Oct 2026—155.0139.9148.0—
22 Oct 2026—155.1140.2148.9—
21 Oct 2026—154.2140.4146.9—
20 Oct 2026—154.0139.6146.7—
19 Oct 2026—154.2139.9147.2—
16 Oct 2026—154.8140.5147.8—
15 Oct 2026—154.7140.4148.4—
14 Oct 2026—155.2140.5151.2—
13 Oct 2026—155.3140.8150.6—
12 Oct 2026—155.7140.1151.0—
9 Oct 2026—154.9139.8150.1—
8 Oct 2026—155.6139.4151.9—
7 Oct 2026—156.8139.6152.8—
6 Oct 2026—155.7139.7151.1—
5 Oct 2026—156.0139.6151.6—
2 Oct 2026—155.9139.6150.5—
1 Oct 2026—154.4140.1151.2—
30 Sept 2026184.3153.8139.7148.8162.0
29 Sept 2026—153.7139.7148.9—
28 Sept 2026—154.4140.1150.7—
25 Sept 2026—153.5140.7149.8—
24 Sept 2026—154.6141.6151.3—
23 Sept 2026—155.1141.6151.3—
22 Sept 2026—154.9142.2149.8—
21 Sept 2026—154.3141.7148.4—
18 Sept 2026—153.6141.3149.3—
17 Sept 2026—152.9141.0147.8—
16 Sept 2026—153.6140.7147.4—
15 Sept 2026—153.8140.7148.1—
14 Sept 2026—154.2141.1149.8—
11 Sept 2026—153.4141.5147.9—
10 Sept 2026—153.8141.8149.8—
9 Sept 2026—153.9142.4148.9—
8 Sept 2026—154.3142.4148.4—
7 Sept 2026—153.9142.5148.5—
4 Sept 2026—153.5142.2148.2—
3 Sept 2026—152.9142.1147.1—
2 Sept 2026—152.6141.1147.2—
1 Sept 2026—154.2142.2149.9—
31 Aug 2026189.6—143.3150.2168.2
28 Aug 2026—153.9143.8150.1—
27 Aug 2026—153.7142.7148.6—
26 Aug 2026—153.3142.9148.6—
25 Aug 2026—153.6142.4147.8—
24 Aug 2026—153.7142.8148.7—
21 Aug 2026—153.6143.0148.0—
20 Aug 2026—154.9141.9148.8—
19 Aug 2026—155.0141.7147.9—
18 Aug 2026—155.3142.3150.8—
17 Aug 2026—155.9142.4150.3—
14 Aug 2026—155.8142.2150.3—
13 Aug 2026—154.6142.3149.6—
12 Aug 2026—154.8142.8148.7—
11 Aug 2026—154.8143.3149.1—
10 Aug 2026—155.3143.8147.7—
7 Aug 2026—154.9143.8147.7—

Showing the most recent 60 of 1288 observations in this window.

Table view — Growth of 100 — the funds that pay you an income
DateInvestec FR Active Income FoF (B) — price onlyInvestec FR Enhanced Income (A) — price only
28 Oct 2026106.5100.2
27 Oct 2026106.5100.2
26 Oct 2026106.4100.2
23 Oct 2026106.3100.2
22 Oct 2026106.3100.1
21 Oct 2026106.3100.1
20 Oct 2026106.0100.1
19 Oct 2026106.0100.1
16 Oct 2026106.0100.0
15 Oct 2026105.9100.0
14 Oct 2026105.9100.0
13 Oct 2026105.9100.0
12 Oct 2026105.7100.0
9 Oct 2026105.799.9
8 Oct 2026105.699.9
7 Oct 2026105.699.9
6 Oct 2026105.699.9
5 Oct 2026105.599.8
2 Oct 2026105.599.8
1 Oct 2026105.599.8
30 Sept 2026106.0100.3
29 Sept 2026105.8100.3
28 Sept 2026105.8100.3
25 Sept 2026105.8100.2
24 Sept 2026106.0100.2
23 Sept 2026106.0100.2
22 Sept 2026106.1100.2
21 Sept 2026106.0100.1
18 Sept 2026105.9100.1
17 Sept 2026105.8100.1
16 Sept 2026105.7100.0
15 Sept 2026105.5100.0
14 Sept 2026105.6100.0
11 Sept 2026105.6100.0
10 Sept 2026105.799.9
9 Sept 2026105.799.9
8 Sept 2026105.799.9
7 Sept 2026105.799.9
4 Sept 2026105.799.8
3 Sept 2026105.699.8
2 Sept 2026105.599.8
1 Sept 2026105.599.8
31 Aug 2026106.0100.3
28 Aug 2026106.0100.3
27 Aug 2026106.0100.3
26 Aug 2026106.0100.2
25 Aug 2026105.9100.2
24 Aug 2026105.8100.2
21 Aug 2026105.7100.2
20 Aug 2026105.7100.1
19 Aug 2026105.8100.1
18 Aug 2026105.7100.1
17 Aug 2026105.8100.1
14 Aug 2026105.8100.0
13 Aug 2026105.8100.0
12 Aug 2026105.8100.0
11 Aug 2026105.8100.0
10 Aug 2026105.899.9
7 Aug 2026105.899.9
6 Aug 2026105.799.9

Showing the most recent 60 of 348 observations in this window.

Neutral R424.00 at 30 September 2026, 29 days old. -2.82% on August's R436.30, which was the record, and the largest monthly fall since March (-3.04%). +8.94% over twelve months from R389.20, and +4.87% since the end of December. The fund's benchmark fell further in September, -3.69%, and is +3.05% over twelve months. Neutral, from bullish. The bullish call rested on fourteen per cent over a year. September took almost three per cent off the fund in the month your share market lost almost seven, and the twelve-month return is now under nine per cent: still about four and a half points ahead of inflation at 4.5%, and still well ahead of the benchmark it is measured against. A falling month against a year that remains comfortably positive is a mixed reading, and we call mixed readings neutral elsewhere on your board. This is a total-return series, so nothing is missing from the figure.

What each fund returned, year by year — and against what D9

Every Investec fact sheet prints the fund’s return for each complete calendar year — in rand, after fees, calculated NAV-to-NAV with income reinvested. That is total return, the same basis as the upper plot above, and for the three funds still drawn on price alone it is the only honest answer to "what did it earn". The rule across each bar is that fund’s own published benchmark, off the same table on the same fact sheet: bar above the rule means the fund beat it that year. Allan Gray publishes no such table, so its bars and its rule are computed December to December from the two columns of its performance file — and the plot starts at 2014, the first year in which more than one of your funds existed.

Calendar-year total return, against each fund’s own benchmark per cent over each complete calendar year — class A, after fees, income reinvested
Allan Gray BalancedInvestec FR Balanced FoF (A)Investec FR Enhanced Income (A)Investec FR Active Income FoF (A)Investec FR World Axis Core Feeder (A) its own benchmark
0.0%10.0%20.0%201520172019202120232025

Over 2022–2025, the four years you asked about: Allan Gray Balanced +67.5% · Investec FR Balanced FoF (A) +54.0% · Investec FR Active Income FoF (A) +40.8% · Investec FR Enhanced Income (A) +29.3% — each year chained onto the last, not averaged, which on a 20% year is not a small difference. Investec FR World Axis Core Feeder (A) is not in that ranking: it has 3 complete years (2023–2025, +41.0%), and a shorter window is a different question. About those rules. You asked for a yardstick covering the sector average, and three of these are exactly that — the ASISA category each fund is classified in, which is to say the average of its peers. Two are not, and the difference matters: your two income funds are benchmarked to CASH rather than to their category. Active Income is measured against the STeFI Composite, and Enhanced Income against 55% of the call deposit rate — roughly half of what money on deposit earned. Clearing a bar set at half of cash is not the same achievement as beating your peers, and the chart cannot make it one. Now the gaps, because this chart still has three. It is annual — one bar is a finished year, and says nothing about March or about how rough the ride was inside it. It is class A, and you hold class B in three of the four Investec funds; B carries the lower fee, so your own returns were a little better than these bars, by roughly that fee difference, every year and always in the same direction. An empty slot is a fund that was not yet running — never a year it returned nothing: the Balanced fund of funds starts in 2014, Active Income in 2019, Enhanced Income in 2020, and the World Axis feeder only in 2023, which is why it cannot reach 2022. And 2026 is not here, because 2026 is not over. The HSBC fund is absent from this chart alone: it is a UK fund and publishes no rand calendar-year table — its record is the upper plot above, in full, daily, since 2015.

Table view — Calendar-year total return, against each fund’s own benchmark
DateAllan Gray BalancedInvestec FR Balanced FoF (A)Investec FR Enhanced Income (A)Investec FR Active Income FoF (A)Investec FR World Axis Core Feeder (A)
31 Dec 202524.10%18.80%6.80%10.40%4.90%
31 Dec 202410.40%16.40%7.80%10.10%11.30%
31 Dec 202313.0%11.40%7.40%9.70%20.80%
31 Dec 20228.20%0.0%4.60%5.60%—
31 Dec 202120.20%20.30%3.20%5.80%—
31 Dec 20203.60%7.70%4.70%5.40%—
31 Dec 20196.70%10.80%—7.80%—
31 Dec 2018-3.10%-2.70%———
31 Dec 201711.0%10.20%———
31 Dec 20166.40%4.10%———
31 Dec 201512.30%7.90%———
31 Dec 20149.0%9.90%———

Bullish 24.10% for calendar 2025, quoted from scripts/derived.mjs and unchanged, against its benchmark's 19.10%: five points of outperformance. The best calendar year on your funds board, and ahead of the benchmark it is measured against. Bullish; the next reading cannot come before the end of December.

Which grew most steadily D9

You asked which fund had grown consistently, and said on 6 September that measuring it was worth doing. The charts show you the path; they do not measure it. A fund that ran up 40% and gave back 15% can finish level with one that ground out 4% a year, and only the second was consistent. Below is the same calendar-year record as the chart above, read for steadiness instead of for size: the best year, the worst, how many years it lost money, and how often it cleared its own benchmark.

FundYrsBestWorstSpread, ptsDownBeat it
Allan Gray Balanced26+36.5%
2005
-3.1%
2018
39.6216/26
FR Balanced FoF12+20.3%
2021
-2.7%
2018
23.0110/12
FR Enhanced Income6+7.8%
2024
+3.2%
2021
4.6none6/6
FR Active Income FoF7+10.4%
2025
+5.4%
2020
5.0none6/7
FR World Axis Core3+20.8%
2023
+4.9%
2025
15.9none1/3

Spread is the column to read for your question. It is the distance between a fund’s best year and its worst — the width of the ride, not its direction. On this record FR Enhanced Income is the narrowest at 4.6 points, which is what a steady fund looks like and is not the same as what a good one looks like: the steadiest fund here is not the one that grew most, and the two questions have different answers on purpose. Three things this table is not. It is annual, so a year that fell 12% by June and recovered by December shows as a calm one — a proper measure of the ride needs a daily total-return series, which most of these funds do not yet have. Down years counts calendar years below zero, which is a blunt instrument on a fund with three years of record. And beating a benchmark means only what the benchmark is: two of these are cash bars, one of them set at half of cash, and a fund that clears such a bar every year has told you less than the column suggests.

What is still owed

The distributions. Three of your funds are still drawn on price alone, and the fix is the same for all three: every Fundrock fact sheet prints the fund’s last four declarations, at a stable address, and adding them back turns a price line into the total-return line the rest of the page uses. For the Balanced fund of funds — which declares twice a year — the Internet Archive holds enough past fact sheets to reconstruct the declarations back to 2021, so its line can be made whole across your January 2022 start. The two income funds declare monthly, and the archive is too thin for that: those two accrue their distributions from here, and until then their published calendar-year returns, on the chart above, are their record.

Your own class, and your own dates. Everything here is fund-level and public. The one thing it cannot know is what you bought and when — and that stays true by choice: you said on 6 September to leave this as growth rather than value, and this page therefore holds no figure about your position. Asking Investec and Fundrock for your own statements would still buy one thing this cannot: your class, your units, and the daily record in the class you actually hold rather than the class they publish tables for.

Where these numbers come from

SeriesSourceCadenceLatest
Allan Gray Balanced FundAllan Gray fund performance CSV (Balanced Fund, total return)monthly · quantitative2026-09-30 · current
Allan Gray Balanced benchmark — SA Multi Asset High Equity averageAllan Gray fund performance CSV (Balanced Fund) — Benchmark columnmonthly · quantitative2026-09-30 · current
Investec FR Enhanced Income Fund (A)ProfileData FundsData Online — CIS daily price lookup (Investec FR Enhanced Income Fund, class A)daily · quantitative2026-10-28 · current
Investec FR Active Income Fund of Funds (B)ProfileData FundsData Online — CIS daily price lookup (Investec FR Active Income Fund of Funds, class B)daily · quantitative2026-10-28 · current
Investec FR Balanced Fund of Funds (B)ProfileData FundsData Online — CIS daily price lookup (Investec FR Balanced Fund of Funds, class B)daily · quantitative2026-10-28 · current
Investec FR World Axis Core Feeder Fund (B)ProfileData FundsData Online — CIS daily price lookup (Investec FR World Axis Core Feeder Fund, class B)daily · quantitative2026-10-28 · current
HSBC Balanced Fund (Institutional Accumulation)FT fund tearsheet chart series — HSBC Balanced Fund Institutional Accumulation (GB00BYRKGL32)daily · quantitative2026-10-29 · current
HSBC Balanced Fund (Institutional Accumulation), in randComputed at build timedaily · derived2026-10-29 · current
Allan Gray Balanced — calendar-year total returnComputed at build timeannual · derived2025-12-31 · current
Allan Gray Balanced benchmark — calendar-year total returnComputed at build timeannual · derived2025-12-31 · current
Investec FR Enhanced Income — calendar-year total return (A)Investec MDD (minimum disclosure document) — Investec FR Enhanced Income, calendar-year returns tableannual · quantitative2025-12-31 · current
55% of STeFI call deposit index — calendar-year returnInvestec MDD — Investec FR Enhanced Income — calendar-year total return, calendar-year returns table, benchmark rowannual · quantitative2025-12-31 · current
Investec FR Active Income FoF — calendar-year total return (A)Investec MDD (minimum disclosure document) — Investec FR Active Income FoF, calendar-year returns tableannual · quantitative2025-12-31 · current
STeFI Composite Index — calendar-year returnInvestec MDD — Investec FR Active Income FoF — calendar-year total return, calendar-year returns table, benchmark rowannual · quantitative2025-12-31 · current
Investec FR Balanced FoF — calendar-year total return (A)Investec MDD (minimum disclosure document) — Investec FR Balanced FoF, calendar-year returns tableannual · quantitative2025-12-31 · current
(ASISA) SA Multi Asset Medium Equity — calendar-year returnInvestec MDD — Investec FR Balanced FoF — calendar-year total return, calendar-year returns table, benchmark rowannual · quantitative2025-12-31 · current
Investec FR World Axis Core Feeder — calendar-year total return (A)Investec MDD (minimum disclosure document) — Investec FR World Axis Core Feeder, calendar-year returns tableannual · quantitative2025-12-31 · current
(ASISA) Global Multi Asset High Equity — calendar-year returnInvestec MDD — Investec FR World Axis Core Feeder — calendar-year total return, calendar-year returns table, benchmark rowannual · quantitative2025-12-31 · current