Anthony Bolton's Disappointment

One of the best value managers ever in the UK was Anthony Bolton of Fidelity. He came out of retirement when he saw the potential for investing in China.

He relocated to Hong Kong and started a new fund last April -- the Special Situations China Fund.

The fund's performance has been "disapointing" over the past year. Emma Wall of the Telegraph interviewed Bolton and asked about the fund's results. He replies:

The last year has been very much a year of two halves. I was feeling things were going well after the first six months and then the latter six were disappointing – even more so the period since year end. The market background has been poor and I think that has hurt me two ways. I have a lot of medium and smaller size stocks which tend to be more volatile than the market, and also the fund has gearing that increases the volatility too.

There have been some specific areas that have not done well. My put options on the Korean market and some of the US listed Chinese shares have also been disappointing – there have been some problems identified at some of those companies and that has lead investors to be wary of the whole area. I have 15pc of the fund exposed to that group.

Having a low exposure to oil has also hurt me – as the Middle East problems obviously caused the oil price to rise.

Bolton's still a great manager. This has to do with more with timing than anything else.

You can read the entire interview here.

Comments

[Tim]

John, could not agree with you more.

Also to look at his track record over such a short period of time is meaningless.

[John]

@Tim: Yep, investing is a marathon, not a sprint.