Alastair Mundy vetää Investecin UK Special Situations -rahastoa, jolla on Morningstar korkein Analyst Rating "Gold". Rahasto pyrkii sijoittamaan toisin kuin markkinoiden valtavirta. Lue tästä artikkelista tarkemmin Mundyn neuvot sijoittajille, jotka haluavat toimia toisin kuin muut.
Holly Cook: Following an entertaining presentation from Alastair Mundy at our recent conference, I caught up with the head of Investec's contrarian equity team and asked him how investors can find out-of-favour stocks that show promise. Here's what he had to say.
Alastair Mundy: I think the best environment is when everyone's moving in one direction. You're absolutely right, there's lots of people moving at the moment, but lot of them are cancelling each other out. So you've got those people who think that US is going to stick together and fall apart, China is going to blow-up or China is going to collapse. I think we're sitting and watching, we're obviously doing little bits and pieces, but I think, particularly if the markets went one way and got very, very depressed, usually what happens is you do get individual stock opportunities. So, it's not a brilliant time for us to be investing, but we're seeing signs that the investor pessimism and irrationality is starting to pick up and that's what we love and wait for.
Cook: So are there any particular stocks in your portfolio at the moment that are perhaps downtrodden and others might see as not having a positive future, but that you've seen some light in?
Mundy: Yes, I think the one for us which has been in the press quite a lot is Avon Products, which we hold across a number of funds and which has got bid for, but now the bidders have withdrawn it. It saw quite an exciting couple of weeks. It has got a new chief executive. What we like about it is that I think the general belief is that the doorstep selling is very old fashioned and is in significant decline. We think, if you look at the whole industry, we don't think it is in significant decline, we just think Avon itself has been managed very poorly and therefore there's a great opportunity for self help there. With the new management team, and she's likely to bring in a new board of directors and new executives, we think there's great opportunities there. People shouldn't be writing off such a very famous and long established brand, quite as quickly as they are.
Cook: Is there a formula for finding a bruised franchise or a downtrodden stock, or is that really case-by-case?
Mundy: It is just case-by-case. We have little things. We have a check list of things to watch out for. But unfortunately we haven't found the perfect formula, we haven't got the source just right yet, which I guess is perfect for us, because if we ever found out it, I guess a computer could replace us. So, we're just looking for clues in general that have worked in the past, but they're not always guaranteed to work in the future.
Cook: So you really need to be an expert in your field, you can't just sort of look at the whole market?
Mundy: Yes, that's an interesting question. We always call ourselves specialists in out-of-favour stocks. We don't think it's important to be a specialist in a sector, but just to understand company life cycles. That's where we think we've got most opportunity to add value.
Cook: For a written list of some of the main points to take into the consideration when finding out-of-favour stocks, read our related article in the links below. Thanks for watching.
