Analyst: Insight
Making changes to a portfolio can often be a long, difficult process for a manager taking over a fund.
Mr Pinggera admits these funds, as well as many others in other asset classes, are "not necessarily run of the mill plays". This is in part down to the duo's thematic approach, which focuses on global themes such as agricultural commodities, environmental technologies and healthcare. As a multi-manager fund this means holding positions in specialist funds such as the Impax Environmental Markets, DWS Global Agri Business and Fidelity Global Healthcare funds.
Mr Waddington says: "These are sectors which can perform irrespective of market direction: this quarter the environmental technologies is up about 5.5 per cent, healthcare is up about 2 per cent, and agricultural commodities up about 6.5 per cent."
The small cap sector is also of interest, he adds, as there are "plenty of opportunities" for some small companies to grow as global markets recover from the recession. Particularly of interest are those firms which can generate cash and access funding at a time when liquidity is still hard to come by.
"In that [illiquid] environment it’s very good to have an active strategy to capture the opportunity, and we have the Baring European Select fund to capture it," Mr Waddington says. "Markets have been off, but that fund is up 6 per cent quarter to date."
The fund's real estate exposure has more than doubled from 2.9 per cent at the end of April to 6.5 per cent at the end of May, largely down to a decision to buy back into the iShares EPRA/NAREIT UK Property exchange traded fund, rather than the less flexible unit trusts or Oeics. It is a position which was held from May until September last year, when it was sold off following a 20 per cent outperformance of the market, Mr Waddington says.
This month he bought back into the fund, selling FTSE 100 futures against it to remove market risk – a technique used across Insight’s multi-manager range to "isolate individual themes".
Annual performance figures indicate that the stormy period experienced both externally and internally at the beginning of last year, which saw the fund lose 32.9 per cent in the year to March 31 2009, is now well behind its two managers.
