Gareth Says – MANAGING OUR DISCRETIONARY FUNDS AND EXPECTATIONS

I feel it is fair to say that our Discretionary Funds have been a success in terms of the amount of monies we have taken in and the performance of the funds.

We launched in February 2020 and since launch the FTSE is down 8% and all our funds are up, generally speaking, the higher the risk, the better the performance, but that doesn’t mean everyone should go high risk!

From many conversations I have had with clients, I felt it was appropriate to explain how the funds are managed. Before we had the portfolios all clients were fully invested for nearly all of the time, there were some exceptions, such as the ‘Hung Parliament’ and ‘Brexit’ periods when we took a large amount of investments into cash, client by client. It took us many weeks to execute all trades.

The advantage of the Discretionary Fund Management (DFM’s) is that, if such an event were to happen in the future, we can move funds very quickly, to cash, with everyone being switched at the same time. As indeed we did, just after launch in March 2020 when Covid 19 ‘hit’ the markets.

The main drive of this article is to explain that we will not “run” to cash every time there is a downturn in the market. If we feel that an event will affect the market adversely, that is the time we will become more defensive and increase our cash holdings, with all funds except the “Rollercoaster” fund whose aim is to remain invested. The market fluctuates naturally and we will manage those fluctuations with the funds we invest into, we are quite active in switching the funds.

If you wish to see the switches we have undertaken in the previous 12 months please visit Morfitt & Turnbull website: and put in the password ‘gareth’ (all lower case) and all will be revealed.

Happy Investing.

Gareth.