The pair, who head up the FE Triple Crown-rated L&G Multi Manager Balanced, Growth and Income funds, were overweight Japan in 2008, decreased their holdings in 2009 in order to bulk up on emerging markets exposure, but bought into the region again in March.
FE Analytics shows the balanced fund has a 3.6 per cent weighting to Japan, the income fund a 2.4 per cent weighting, while the growth fund allocated 4.6 per cent to the country.
Performance of funds vs sectors over 3-yrs
Source: FE Analytics
The vehicles have outperformed their respective sectors since their launch in April 2008, a factor that contributed to their being awarded an FE Triple Crown Rating earlier this week.
"We were helped out in 2008 by becoming defensive; we bought into gilts and were underweight corporate," Thein explained.
"We were also underweight sterling, but bought into the yen, as it looked cheap and tends to do well in times of heightened financial risk."
Gardner added that shifting quickly between asset classes in 2009 meant they didn’t miss out when the market started to pull up.
"We worked quickly when valuations hit the bottom and increased our weighting to Asia and emerging market equities. We pulled out of gilts as yields fell," he explained.
Thein says 2011 so far has been eerily similar to 2010, with high volatility and markets range-trading.
"We’re all waiting to see if the global economy will muddle through, or if something more sinister is lying in wait," he said.
Right now the managers have a bias to income managers, but are also hedging with gold funds.
"Gold has firmly moved away from being a commodity, and is now a currency. It’s keeping its value as a hedge against inflation and central banks are now net buyers, for the first time since the 1970s."
"We’re playing this via gold equities, as valuations look very good and there is a tight correlation with the gold price," Thein fnished.