In the global sector this does stand out and offers investors access to self-help stories which they may not necessarily want to buy in to directly.
Investing in global funds takes away some of the guess work on where to invest and what companies to invest in. The challenge is finding a fund which meets your needs and a manager who can deliver. Every manager will try and explain why they are different and when you consider all the options there are some really interesting funds in the market.
One fund which we were recently introduced to was the Odey Allegra Developed Market Fund. This stood out for a number of reasons. Firstly the key drivers for investments are self-help stories (which the manager expanded on in the update), the stock turnover is relatively low, it is a highly concentrated portfolio with the top ten holdings making up 50% of the holdings and it is a stock pickers fund focusing on developed markets only.
We were also impressed that it is globally diversified, many global funds have a heavy leaning to the US, in this case around 29% is in the US, 25% UK, 16% Europe and the balance spread across Asia, Japan and the Middle East.
On the downside the nature of the investments we suspect makes this a much more volatile fund and therefore investors should only consider for long term investments with an acceptance over the short term there could be significant falls. Secondly although Odey have a strong reputation as a group this is a relatively new fund (launched in 2013) and therefore there is no real track record to compare.
In the update the managers focused on a number of holdings which we will cover as this really helps understand their process.