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Mr Hankey, manager of the £74.3m Credit Suisse UK Thematic fund, said the asset class’s increasingly negative outlook was one of the key themes in his portfolio at the moment. The fund is 9 per cent underweight mining and 4 per cent underweight oil and gas relative to the FTSE All Share index.

“United Airlines recently grounded 20 per cent of its fleet, Ryanair cut 30 per cent of its capacity at Stansted and, in the US, motorway travel in March had its biggest drop in 66 years,” he said. “It’s very difficult to be positive on commodities in this environment.”

Mr Hankey acknowledged he may have moved too early on the asset class after he closed out the fund’s China theme last year. But he said the direction commodities were taking at the moment justified his process.

“The risk of being contrarian is that you can sometimes be too early when you’re moving against the market,” he said. “In hindsight, we came out of the China theme a little too early."

Two other important themes Mr Hankey is currently running include security threat, which accounts for 5 per cent of the portfolio, and digital age, which accounts for 16 per cent.

“The average broadband speed in the UK is 8mbs, while in the US it’s 51 per cent, and in France, 102 per cent, so we’re significantly behind in the developed markets,” he said. “The UK should move toward a better service on that front.”

For the year to 18 August, the fund lost 9.7 per cent compared with the UK All Companies sector’s average loss of 11.1 per cent, while over the last three it returned 16.6 per cent against the sector’s return of 12.7 per cent, according to Morningstar.