The Mageska Fund and the Mageska EcoVision Fund®
The first half of 2026 was a strong one for both of our Funds, each of which outpaced its benchmark net of fees.
Through 30 June 2026, the Mageska Fund returned +14.52% (Series F, net of fees), compared with +10.14% for its benchmark of 60% global equities and 40% U.S. fixed income, an outperformance of roughly 4.4 percentage points, and +25.66% over the trailing twelve months against +19.38% for the benchmark. That performance ranks the Mageska Fund first in its category year to date on Fundata and in the first quartile of its peer group across every time horizon for which it has a track record.
The modern, dynamic portfolio architecture we’ve put in place over the course of 2025 continued to prove its worth, most tellingly during the market’s brief March pullback. In that month, the Fund returned -3.0%, a smaller decline than the benchmark’s -3.2%, and by the end of the first quarter it was already ahead, returning +1.9% versus -0.8% for the benchmark. It then extended that lead through a strong spring (+4.0% in April, +4.9% in May, +3.0% in June), finishing the half comfortably ahead of its benchmark, precisely the resilience we were expecting. We’ll expand on our portfolio construction process further in this letter.
The Mageska EcoVision Fund, in its first full half year since its October 2025 launch, returned +18.24% (Series F, net of fees), compared with +13.07% for its global equities benchmark, an outperformance of over 5 percentage points and an encouraging start for a strategy still early in its life.
The EcoVision themes have been strong this year, and we expect it to remain one of the defining investment topics of the coming decade. We believe the Fund is well positioned to own the companies shaping the next industrial revolution, one built on the massive investment in infrastructure and technology needed to reduce the world’s carbon footprint.
Detailed performance figures and monthly fact sheets for both Funds are available on our website: mageska.com.
Economic context
The first half of 2026 offered a familiar backdrop: an economy that kept surprising to the upside, inflation that proved stickier than markets had hoped, and a Federal Reserve caught between the two. Our base case is a Fed that stays largely on hold rather than tightening, a stance reinforced by the political pressures of a midterm election year. The main risk to that view is a hawkish surprise, which would likely bring a sharp but short-lived pullback rather than the start of a bear market.
Two market shifts shaped our positioning. First, leadership broadened away from the narrow group of mega cap technology leaders that had dominated for years, with small caps, cyclical sectors, and international and emerging markets taking the lead, a rotation we expect to continue into the second half. Second, renewed conflict in the Middle East and the soaring electricity demands of artificial intelligence pushed energy security to the forefront, lifting the companies that build and modernize grid and utility infrastructure, a theme that connects directly to our EcoVision strategy, which we discuss later in this letter.
Mageska Fund
The Mageska Fund reflects our conviction that diversification, combined with the efficient use of capital, can unlock durable returns for investors while also performing well relative to an index. That is no small feat: more than 80% of active managers underperform their benchmark over three-, five- and ten-year horizons[1]. Our goal is straightforward: to deliver the base return of a 60/40 portfolio and add diversified sources of return on top of it, so the portfolio stays resilient and performs well through a range of market cycles.
As mentioned earlier, this structure has proven very successful since we implemented the framework in June 2025. The Fund ranks in the first quartile of its peer group across several time horizons in the Fundata database:
The Fund uses a portable alpha approach: a beta sleeve overlaid with weakly correlated alpha sources.
- The Beta Sleeve (60/40): a 60% global equity and 40% U.S. aggregate bond core, built with ETFs and futures to capture strong, sustained market trends.
- The Nymbus Overlay: a systematic strategy managed by Nymbus Capital, deployed through futures, that adds return with low correlation to the beta sleeve.
- The Mageska Overlay (plus a cash management component): Mageska managed alpha sources that likewise respond differently to economic cycles and market shocks.
Each sleeve contributed in its own way through the first half. As the attribution chart below shows, the beta sleeve added 11.00%, the Mageska overlay 2.32%, and the Nymbus overlay 1.19%, for a combined total of +14.52%.
The beta sleeve did exactly what it was built to do, tracking the benchmark closely. A slight overweight to markets outside the US in the first two months of the year added extra return, helping the Fund edge ahead of its benchmark early on.
The Mageska overlay was well positioned to capture the three major rallies of 2026 so far: gold in the first part of the year, crude oil in the second, and, most recently, AI infrastructure/technology. We make no claim that our entries and exits are perfectly timed. What our models do well is identify large, durable trends, with a preference for those that add diversification to the portfolio, and this year those trends played to our strengths.
The Nymbus overlay, for its part, delivered steady returns with low volatility, drawing on a range of weakly correlated sources throughout the half year.
[1] S&P Dow Jones Indices, “SPIVA Canada Year-End 2025 Scorecard,” 2025. https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/spiva-canada-year-end-2025.pdf
Mageska EcoVision Fund
Launched in October 2025, the Mageska EcoVision Fund is a global equity strategy that lets investors allocate a portion of their portfolio toward EcoVisionary companies positioned to benefit from the shift to a low carbon economy.
The energy themes we described earlier come to life directly in this Fund. As nations confront the reality that they must build their own energy independence, and as the electricity demands of artificial intelligence climb relentlessly, the companies that supply grid and utility solutions are gaining real and rising pricing power. EcoVision is deliberately positioned in exactly these areas: utilities and industrial companies at the heart of grid modernization and electrification together make up roughly two thirds of the portfolio, alongside holdings such as GE Vernova, ABB, Iberdrola, and Engie.
EcoVision is built around three sustainable themes, applied under a “double materiality” lens:
- Energy transition: adoption of renewable energy, decarbonization, grid modernization, and energy storage. This is the most in focus of the three today, driven now not only by climate goals but by the hard imperatives of energy security and the soaring power needs of AI.
- Circular economy: use of sustainable materials, recycling, and waste reduction.
- Preservation of natural capital: air and water purification while protecting biodiversity.
The Fund’s investment universe is defined in collaboration with our research partner, Sustainable Market Strategies. Demand for this kind of strategy continues to grow among institutional investors, endowments, and high net worth families alike, often led by next-generation investors, who increasingly require their portfolios to reflect these economic and environmental shifts. We invite you to consult the EcoVision presentation on our website for the strategy’s foundations, structure, and long-term vision.
What’s new
The first half of the year brought several operational milestones that make the Funds easier to access and follow:
- Weekly NAV: net asset values are now calculated on a weekly basis.
- Fund Library: performance data for our Funds is now available through Fund Library, powered by Fundata.
- FundServ: both Funds are now available on FundServ.
- Podcast: we published our first podcast series, Perspective Mageska, now available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts (content in French) – visit mageska.com to listen.
- A growing team: we welcomed a new team member to support our technology development, reinforcing the M-LAB platform that underpins our investment process.
What’s ahead
- The Mageska Conference (coming this fall): an opportunity to share our vision, discuss our research projects, and let clients and partners get to know the team behind the strategies. Details to follow.
- A second series of podcasts, building on the first.
We thank you sincerely for your trust and look forward to continuing the journey with you through the rest of 2026.
Roberto Marrocco, CFA
Chief of investments and operations