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Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

Diversification works

14th March 2020 by Mark Potter Leave a Comment

In my training sessions for people who want to understand or even manage their portfolios, I generally get to deal with the fairly widespread failure of many so called absolute return funds to deliver on their objectives.

I usually talk through the facts about different funds having different strategies and mention that not all funds that are good diversifiers will be easily recognisable by their name, nor will they necessarily be ranked in a homogenous (the same sort of funds) peer group, so they may have what look to be weak quartile rankings over some measurement periods. Of course, my subscribers know that past performance is informative, but not on its own a useful criterion for selecting funds.

One fund that I often use to make my point is the JP Morgan Global Macro Opportunities fund. This fund uses a themed approach and draws on JP Morgan’s long term application of behavioural finance theory. To understand it better, you need to do a little reading of the supporting documentation.

I used the fund in the advisory Tactical Cautious Portfolio which I often recommended as a portfolio element when I was an IFA and which I still maintain personally.

Take a look at its performance over recent weeks. You will see that one can invest in ways that take the worst shock out of market corrections.

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