The Australian investors who hit the jackpot in 2024

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It was a battle between stock pickers and cryptocurrency crusaders late last year with just one equity manager managing to beat the meme-coin mania to take the crown of Australia’s best-performing investment fund in 2024.
Pengana shoots the lights out
While crypto funds accounted for three of the top five best-performing Australian investment funds last year, it was Pengana portfolio manager James McDonald and co-manager Jeremy Bendeich who took the top spot with a 109.2 per cent return for their high conviction equities strategy.
A stockpicker with more than two decades of experience, Mr McDonald’s bets on ASX-listed titanium technology play IperionX, the fund’s largest holding, accounted for more than half of the triple-figure return.
A savvy bet on Australia’s fastest-growing biotech, Clarity Pharmaceuticals, also buoyed returns after the shares ran as much as 300 per cent in the first half of last year.
Coming into 2025, Mr McDonald said his portfolio was more concentrated than 12 months ago, having exited several smaller holdings to go all-in on its biggest bets.
“We’ve done really well out of things like Spotify and some other larger names in the US,” he said.
“Our strategy has been to concentrate on the smaller names. They’re mostly listed in Australia, but they’re global businesses.”
Pengana’s global remit, as well as playing in the smaller end of the market, helped the fund dodge some of the issues facing larger-cap strategies, which have struggled to beat the market because of the dominant performance of a just a handful of stocks in Australia and the US.
“The large-cap market is really tough, and we’ve just seen so many funds underperform the benchmark. I’m so glad that’s not an area that we’re fighting in,” he said.
“There’s just enormous opportunities in small companies, if you do your homework, to find great bargains.”
Other strong performers among global equity strategies were Melbourne’s Munro Partners, which returned around 65 per cent last year due to big bets on US growth and tech stocks. Frazis Capital Partner’s fund also rode the large-cap US tech rally, as well as ASX-listed biotech, to chart a 61 per cent return.
A savvy bet on Australia’s fastest-growing biotech, Clarity Pharmaceuticals, also buoyed returns after the shares ran as much as 300 per cent in the first half of last year.