In the past much of the returns have been driven by big macro calls, now he feels it is about selective stock picking.
Investing in resources can be cyclical, and therefore there are periods when it is in favour and periods when it is not! As an example in the last five years, investing in an ETF All Commodities Fund would have delivered a return of -27.10% to the end of February 2015. So this is a good benchmark to follow. For this reason it is an area many investors will avoid.
One fund, the Martin Currie Global Resources Fund over the same period returned 1.10%, which showed despite negative sentiment in the sector it is possible to deliver positive returns albeit fairly weak!
The Martin Currie Fund was launched in October 2003, however the significant change occurred in December 2005 when Duncan Goodwin took over the management of the fund. He was widely acknowledged as the key architect of what happened of the next near ten year period. Redesigning the product and effectively making the strategy his. The five years up to when he left in 2014 delivered positive returns if 31.60% against the ETF which was down 9.28%.
Duncan left Martin Currie to take over the Baring Global Resources Fund and has adopted the same process. Since taking over the fund on 6 January 2014 and up to 28 February 2015 the Baring Fund is down 0.76% against the index which is down 13.88%.
The point is that for those looking for a Global Resource Fund, these changes may have been missed by potential investors and therefore this fund becomes a consideration for potential investors. In this update we will touch on two things – firstly why investors might want to invest in this sector and why this fund.