She says: “We are very passionate about the process and working towards that and I think that takes a certain mindset, plus it’s simply too difficult and too resource intensive to do by yourself.
“It’s important that it doesn’t just become two funds, it is one fund we both have responsibility for.”
Hamilton did experience the life of a solo-fund manager after joining Polar in October 2016 while Godber waited for his gardening leave from Miton to end, painstakingly rebuilding the model database that forms the core of their stock-picking strategy.
The database includes the full FTSE 350, excluding investment companies, as well as a further 125 AIM stocks and is the exact same successful process as that used at Miton.
Ultimately, they are value investors looking to make returns by buying businesses “that are trading at a discount to their intrinsic worth”, Godber says. He adds: “That’s what value means, we don’t predict technology change or shift in healthcare, we just want to know if there’s a pound on the stock market being sold for 50 pence.
“That’s where we have an edge, we believe to achieve that you have to look across the UK not just a narrow band of large-cap companies so we are a multi-cap fund, but we don’t do micro-cap, we don’t go below £200m.”
From the database, they tackle the first hurdle of any investment decision for a value hunter, looking at whether it is cheap.
It is the first step of a three-pronged approach to their investments which is completed with an evaluation of how sustainable the business and its returns are and how safe an investment they would be.
Godber says: “Ultimately the business that makes its way into the portfolio has such a tough hurdle to get in, the actual way that business performs you hope is down to its own destiny.
“It’s better to focus on the fundamentals of the business and what it’s capable of delivering. But I think there has been a change after the election and there will be consequences but it is a case of waiting to see what those consequences are.”
