In fact, the market has struggled to move sideways over the past month.
Rathbones' chief investment officer Julian Chillingworth told FE Trustnet this week that he expected the summer to see a period of increased volatility and dips in the market, while Franklin’s Richard Bullas says that analysts are too optimistic in their forecasts for this year.
This means that investors may well be looking to reduce the risk in their portfolios and for a safe pair of hands to look after their money over the summer.
There are many good defensive funds that FE Trustnet has covered in recent weeks, but some take a more sophisticated approach to protecting capital than others.
Many retail funds use the market-neutral strategies typically employed by hedge funds to look after the savings of the rich.
One such fund is Insight Absolute UK Equity Market Neutral, which FE Trustnet looked at in detail in February.
The £706m fund has made positive returns in every calendar year since launch in 2007, including 2008 when it made 6.31 per cent.
The fund aims for low volatility, and data from FE Analytics shows it has achieved this, with an annualised score of just 1.38 per cent over the past five years.
Its incremental gains in both rising and falling markets have amounted to returns of 19.72 per cent over the period.
Performance of fund vs sector and benchmark since launch
Source: FE Analytics
The fund uses paired positions to eliminate the market risk on the fund.
Rob Morgan (pictured), analyst at Charles Stanley Direct, explains that the method involves the managers "going long" one stock and shorting one they expect it to do better than.
In this way, whether the market as a whole goes up or down, the fund gets the difference in the two stocks as a profit, from which the fund grinds out incremental gains.However, Morgan warns that it is a very difficult strategy to implement and it depends very much on the skill of the manager.
"It’s a strategy that’s employed by a number of funds in the Absolute Return sector," Morgan said.
"The problem with it is that if you are trying to generate alpha in equities either by pairing stocks or picking those that should outperform, you are reliant on that one strategy and certain funds have struggled because the manager has had a bad year."
"If a long-only fund underperforms the index, the investors still make positive returns, but the problem with the market-neutral funds is that the fund may give a negative return."
"So this is the thing people have problems with."
"These funds implied they could provide a level of return year-in-year-out, which is very difficult to achieve because alpha doesn’t come in uniform ways."
"If you have a bad few months, suddenly your fund has lost money, while you could have had it in cash or premium bonds, for example."
"It’s very much reliant on the manager to get those particular bets right. If your manager isn’t a very good stockpicker, you are going to lose value."
"Similarly, if your manager is good, he can add small amounts of value each year, and you don’t need to worry about what the market is doing."
Morgan rates the Melchior European Absolute Return fund among the portfolios that use this strategy.
"It’s not 100 per cent market-neutral as it may have a few more short positions than long right now," he said.
"The manager Leonard Charlton tends to be more pessimistic and so when the markets go up, he tends to struggle."
Data from FE Analytics shows that the fund, a $435m Luxembourg-domiciled SICAV, had a poor 2012, losing 9 per cent while the MSCI AC Europe index made 14.9 per cent.
However, it has made 15.01 per cent since launch, according to data from FE Analytics, with an annualised volatility of only 8.9 per cent. The index has a volatility of 19.63 per cent over the same period.
The MSCI AC Europe index is chosen only for comparative purposes and is not a benchmark chosen by the manager.
Performance of fund vs sector and index since launch
Source: FE Analytics
One way of reducing the over-reliance on the single strategy is to pick a fund that employs a number of different approaches to complement it.
Insight Absolute Insight has 24.2 per cent of its assets in Insight Absolute UK Equity Market Neutral but the rest in bond, credit and currency funds.
Data from FE Analytics shows it has outperformed the narrower strategy in recent years.
Insight Absolute Insight has made 28.4 per cent over the past five years, albeit with a slightly higher volatility of 2.25 per cent.
However, bonds have had an outstanding run, while investors are crowding into equities of late, with many commentators warning that fixed interest will not do as well in the coming months.
Therefore, investors who are concerned about what the market will do this summer may be more attracted to the market-neutral option.
Insight Absolute UK Equity Market Neutral is available with a minimum initial investment of £3,000 and has ongoing charges of 1.17 per cent, plus 10 per cent of any gains made over the 3 month LIBID benchmark.