The manager currently heads up three retail-friendly portfolios: CF Odey Opus, INSYNERGY Odey and the FSA offshore-recognised Odey Pan European fund. It was announced earlier this year that the INSYNERGY portfolio is to be wound up and that investors will be offered a free switch into CF Odey Opus. While Odey (pictured) uses long-short mechanisms in his hedge fund, both CF Odey Opus and Odey Pan European predominantly use long-only equity.
The Opus portfolio sits in the IMA Global sector, which it has consistently beaten in the medium- and long-term.
Since its launch in August 2001, the £200m fund has delivered 181.61 per cent, compared with just 35.42 per cent from its sector and 33.53 per cent from its MSCI World benchmark.
Only two funds – M&G Global Basics and McInroy & Wood Smaller Companies – have returned more over the period.
Performance of fund vs sector and index since launch
Source: FE Analytics
Opus is also a top-quartile performer over five and 10 years, with returns of 29.08 and 165.76 per cent respectively.
The only significant blip on Odey’s record came in 2011, when the fund lost 14.16 per cent – around 10 percentage points more than its index. As a result, it is bottom quartile over three years, with returns of just 11.84 per cent.
CF Odey Opus is, however, far more volatile than its sector and benchmark, although it did manage to protect far more effectively against the downside in 2008.
Odey runs a relatively diverse portfolio of 77 companies, with around 40 per cent of assets invested in the top-10 holdings.
By far his biggest position is a 10 per cent weighting in BSkyB, followed by a 5.4 per cent weighting in Sky Deutschland.
Odey has a specific focus on financials, and the fund has Barclays, JP Morgan Chase & Co, RSA Insurance Group and Citigroup in its top-10.
The fund is also overweight consumer services and tech, but underweight pharmaceuticals.
Rob Morgan, fund analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, thinks the fund is a good bet for investors – as long as they are able to put up with the volatility.
"He’s one of those managers who is always going to be more volatile than the market, because he’s not afraid to back his high-conviction views."
"He can have a load in cash at some points and back a stock with a significant amount of money – like he’s doing at the moment with BSkyB."
"Over time, he’s added a lot of value doing this, but investors can expect a pretty rough time along the way."
"This is absolutely a long-term holding – over six or 12 months it could seriously underperform, but this aggressive approach has so far worked well for those who are patient."
Odey also heads up the €178m Odey Pan European portfolio, an Ireland-domiciled fund that sits in the Equity Europe including UK sector. Like Opus, it has a stellar medium- to long-term record.
According to FE data, it is up 214.25 per cent since its launch in November 2002, beating its MSCI Europe benchmark by 92.12 percentage points.
Performance of fund vs index since launch
Source: FE Analytics
It has been more volatile, but again like Opus, it had a very good 2008. Our data shows the fund was up 2.83 per cent over the 12-month period, while the MSCI Europe index was down 25.82 per cent. It holds BSkyB, Barclays and Rolls Royce in its top-10.
It is overweight consumer services and tech and underweight mining and healthcare.
The fund invests across both the UK and continental Europe, although the manager also has some indirect exposure to these regions via North America.
Odey currently has a very high cash weighting, at 18.2 per cent.
The European fund is available with a minimum investment of €20,000, and has a total expense ratio of 1.62 per cent. The Opus portfolio is available with an initial investment of £5,000 and has a TER of 1.58 per cent.