This fund was launched on the 31 March 2020. The performance shown is that of the Thornbridge Global Opportunities which Anthony ran from launch in 2004 until the end of August 2019, when the sale of the fund to Thornbridge was completed.
We have always liked the concept of the fund and since launch the fund has significantly outperformed the index. However, in the last few years the performance seems to have struggled somewhat. To provide some background the fund was originally set up with JM Finn. It was then sold to Thornbridge under a five-year deal. That deal has ended, and Anthony left and set up the same fund with Downing. There is still a connection with JM Finn, but it will be a pure Downing product in two years’ time, and Anthony sees this as a ten-year project.
One of concerns when we first met Anthony was the number of holdings, which was 200. This new strategy has 150 holdings and it is important to understand this and how this makes the fund different. This is an asset allocation model. The theory is that markets are surprisingly good at telling us what we should like, and what we should not. What Antony is doing is looking for clusters. So, for example, if airports come up then he wants to buy the best of them. Once he has identified the best of the best, at that stage, they do the bottom up analysis. And from that he builds his group of holdings….read more