It is appropriate that Ben Whitmore’s office is in the Zig Zag building. As a Value investor and manager of the Jupiter
Special Situations Fund, his role is not to move in tandem with the market.
Rather, it is to make money over the long term by buying stocks when they are being heavily discounted and selling when their potential has been recognised.
It is a strategy that has proved itself over the long term, but one that requires total honesty with clients upfront, he says.
“We are value investors, meaning we are hoping to deliver better-than-average returns over time. But, to get there, we are going to zig and zag versus the market. What you don’t want to do is promise a whole lot of returns and not explain the fact that you are going to have a big zig zag.”
Like father, like son
Whitmore learned his craft at Schroders with Jim Cox, a significant presence in that development. But, he says, it was from his father that he inherited his stubborn, contrarian streak, a trait he says is vital to the job at hand.
Even for a natural contrarian, however, value investing can often be a challenge. “You are running a parallel life,” Whitmore explains, “between wanting to do something different, to have the confidence to do something different, yet at the same time terrified you have made a terrible mistake.”
“You are always rechecking your initial assumptions. Is it really cheap, does it really have an strong balance sheet, is the market position OK?”
For Whitmore, that parallel dialogue is important because overconfidence can all too easily lead to trouble. Knowing that there are periods where, if you are not careful, you can lose your head, a good process becomes crucial.
