The Morningstar Investment Conference takes place in London on May 15-16 this year. In the lead up to the event, Morningstar analysts are previewing their expected highlights from the two days of presentations and panel debates. Read senior investment research analyst Anthony McDonald's top tip by clicking here. Below, Richard Whitehall, investment research analyst with Morningstar OBSR, explains why he's excited to hear from contrarian Investec manager Alastair Mundy.
Many fund managers label themselves as contrarian investors, some can clearly articulate why contrarian investing can be a profitable investment philosophy, but few have successful track records to support their assertion. Alastair Mundy is one contrarian manager who has a successful long-term track record both in UK equities and a multi-asset mandate. Mundy is head of the Contrarian team at Investec and has run the UK Special Situations and Cautious Managed funds since August 2002. He has built a fine track record driven by his contrarian beliefs, such as taking risk out of his portfolio while the UK equity market was rising to its peak in 2007 and then positioning his fund to benefit from the rally in the market in early 2009.
Mundy’s presentation will focus on corporate balance sheet analysis. One might consider such analysis to be fairly consensual and it will be of interest to hear how a team focused on contrarian investing make use of this analysis and how they use their findings to take positions which go against the crowd. One particular area of interest may be whether balance sheet analysis has influenced his opinion as to the value of blue-chip dividend paying stocks. In the wake of 2008 and with a backdrop of heavily indebted governments, these cash-generative companies perceived to have strong balance sheets were very popular with equity investors in 2011. His funds’ mandates lead to a structural bias to these stocks, yet his contrarian nature may direct him to question the value of some of these stocks having seen them significantly outperform. Does the balance sheet analysis reveal whether some such companies carry greater risk than is factored in by the market? Further, many contrarian investors have been drawn into the heavily sold-off UK retailing sector and Mr Mundy also has positions within that area. With many investors deeming such stocks to be too high risk, it will be fascinating to see how his use of balance sheet analysis has provided him with comfort to invest where others are looking to avoid.
Click here to hear Morningstar.co.uk interview Alastair Mundy following his UK Equity Fund Manager of the Year win in 2010.
Register for the Morningstar 2012 Investment Conference here.