The majority of their assets tend to be in equities, without the safety net of fixed income, so anyone taking on this strategy needs to evaluate whether or not they can afford the volatility and ensure they won’t need the extra cash in the short-term.
The fund
Rob Burdett, co-head of multi-manager at Thames River, says the Rathbone Global Opportunity fund suits a more aggressive investor.
"The fund has a concentrated portfolio of 50 global companies and takes a total bottom-up stock picking approach. Like a lot of managers, James Thomson had a rough 2008, but he did well in the middle of last year amid all the volatility and that performance kept pace until the end of the year."
"Being out of sterling at the moment is not a bad strategy and this fund allows you to do that. It launched in 2001 and we bought in quite early on. His performance has been very smooth since the start of 2009."
Risk and return
Data from FE Analytics shows the fund, which has three crowns under the FE Crown Fund Ratings system, consistently outperforming its peers in the IMA Global sector, while taking on less or the same amount of volatility. Over the past one and three years it has been less risky than the FTSE All Share.
Performance of fund vs sector over 10-yrs
| Fund |
1-yr (%) |
3-yrs (%) |
5-yrs (%) |
10-yrs (%) |
| Rathbone Global Opportunites |
1.41 |
79.9 |
28.2 |
138.14 |
| IMA Global |
-2.17 |
55.58 |
10.82 |
53.5 |
Source: FE Analytics
The fund is run by FE Alpha Manager James Thomson, who took the fund over from the group’s chief investment officer Julian Chillingworth in 2005.
With £152.3m under management, the fund is smaller than many of its high profile peers, but has outperformed them consistently.
Performance of funds vs sector since September 2006
Source: FE Analytics
It has returned more than the £1.4bn Fidelity Global Special Situations, the £1.1bn Invesco Perpetual Global Equity and £1.2bn Newton Global Equity funds over one, thee and five years.
Key facts
The fund is overweight the industrials sector, with a 17.8 per cent weighting compared with a 9.7 per cent weighting from its peers. It also has less of an exposure to North America than many other IMA Global funds, but more of a leaning towards Europe.
Petrofac, online estate agent Rightmove, and tobacco company Swedish Match are its biggest holdings.