Alex Wright, who runs the £843m Fidelity Special Values investment trust, is sticking with his strategy of investing in the UK domestic economy, despite the trust performing worse than the market in recent months.
Mr Wright said the time to buy certain shares is when they are out of favour, as UK domestic ones currently are, but that many investors wait for certainty before investing.
He said while the latter approach may be safer in the short-term, it reduced the returns available.
In the half year report of the trust, released to the stock exchange this morning (1 May) and covering the six months to the end of February 2019, Mr Wright said: "The deeply unloved status of the UK market has created an exceptionally fertile period for contrarian stock picking.
"One thing I have learnt from investing in unloved companies is that you should not necessarily wait for good news to become obvious before investing.
"By investing when all the bad news is ‘in the price’ and no good news is expected at all, you put the odds in your favour. I believe this is the situation we are in currently in the UK."
The trust lost 6.1 per cent in the six months under consideration, compared with a loss of 3.7 per cent for the market.
The trust has investments in UK banks, and many small and mid cap companies that derive their income from within the UK.
david.thorpe@ft.com
