The Artemis Strategic Assets fund is a “go-anywhere” fund managed by former Jupiter equity-income star William Littlewood, with a capital growth objective of beating both the FTSE All Share Index and cash over a three-year period. It invests across equities, bonds, currencies, commodities and cash and has the ability to take short-positions, a little like a hedge fund.
The fund has delivered positive returns in three of the last four years, with annualised volatility of 10.5%, which is slightly lower than the MSCI World Index.
“The fund has however fallen short of its aim to beat the All Share over the last three years. That said, it is important to acknowledge that it has operated in a climate of abnormal policies by governments and central banks, leading to supercharged returns on equities and high levels of correlation across risk assets and individual stocks,” Jason Hollands, managing director at Bestinvest, said.
“This hasn’t been a great environment for funds aiming to pick winning stocks and winning markets – in hindsight the game in town would have been to go long developed markets equities.”
Meanwhile, the Trojan Fund, managed by Sebastian Lyon at Troy Asset Management, is an altogether different beast and more defensive in nature. Unlike Artemis Strategic Assets which will use derivatives in its tool kit, the Trojan Fund is long-only but managed with a heavy focus on capital preservation.
It seeks to achieve this through diversification across mainstream asset classes, including equities, index-linked gilts, gold and cash and has the scope to aggressively reposition into cash (up to 50%) as well as move its equity weighting between 25% and 75%. Equity investments are focused on robust, cash generative blue chips companies and there is a strong emphasis on picking stocks that are at attractive valuations.
“Despite the absence of derivative wizardry to limited the scope for losses, and a painful recent run of performance as a result of the fund’s gold positions, volatility has been low at 5.8% per annum, which is similar to an investment grade bond fund and clearly much lower than the Artemis fund, “ Hollands said.
Click here to find out more about the funds with expert comments from Juliet Schooling Latter, research director at Chelsea Financial Services, and Adrian Lowcock, senior investment manager at Hargreaves Lansdown.
