an aggressive return target but one which includes a high degree of focus on risk control.
For some time, we have indicated that we feel that returns from fixed interest investments (bonds) will be squeezed, and that investors can expect greater volatility. Even managers of these assets admit that they don’t really know what the future holds.
In August when the markets went down, both bonds and equities dropped. In the past we have come to expect that bonds will act as a cushion in times of market volatility. It seems that this might be changing.
To respond to this challenge, we are seeing investment houses delivering clever solutions. Standard Life paved the way with the Global Absolute Return Strategies Fund and others have followed including MAN GLG (although the fund has closed), Invesco, Aviva to name just a few.
The JPM Multi Asset Macro Fund is similar to all these strategies and has been in the market since February 2013. It targets a higher return of cash plus 7% with volatility of 6% to 10%. To date it has exceeded its targets and we caught up with one of the managers to understand more about the fund and its aims. From a performance perspective we have compared to the Standard Life Global Focus Strategies Fund which targets the same return.