BrexitMar 15 2019

Crux UK manager admits he does not know Brexit's impact

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The manager of the Crux UK fund has admitted he does not know how Brexit will impact its performance.

When asked how Brexit would impact his fund, Jamie Ward said: "I don't know, is the honest answer. If you tell me what's going to happen I can give you a stab, but no one seems to know what's going to happen with the political side of it so I couldn't necessarily tell you what's going to happen.

"It seems to be, because of the nature of the portfolio being very much exposed to large international earners, that a weak sterling would probably be a positive for the fund, relative, although we are not relative investors.

"Whichever outcome you think would give a weak sterling, that would probably a positive for the fund, and vice versa. But I don't know what's going to happen."

Mr Ward's £61m fund outperformed the UK All Companies sector over the past year, returning 2.69 per cent while the sector gained just 0.68 per cent.

But over the past three months this has reversed, and the fund has gained 6.07 per cent while the sector has gained 7.5 per cent.

Mr Ward said: "Partly this was a reversal of what was happening in Q4. You will remember markets were quite weak going into that period. A lot of the sorts of stocks that were weak in Q4 were not the kind of things we invest in but going into Q1 you inevitably end up getting a bit of a rally in the stocks that were weak.

"When I think about the relative performance though I am fairly comfortably at this point. A lot of the very slight underperformance we have had in the fund in the past three months has actually been down to the stuff we don't own rather than having stood on any landmines. We have not had any bad blow ups.

"We don't own Rio Tinto, which has been I think the largest single driver of performance in the All Share, we don't have AstraZeneca - we don't own any of the mining sector in fact because it is not part of our remit - but we do have several businesses that have performed really quite well, it is just that they are not necessarily keeping up with the index."

He said banks were "really quite undervalued" when asked which sectors he saw as particular opportunities.

damian.fantato@ft.com