Sajiv Vaid, 50, co-manages the £3.3bn Silver-rated Fidelity MoneyBuilder Income fund, which has delivered an annualised return of 4.9% over five years and yields 3.1%. As well as bonds issued by the UK and US governments, the fund holds the debt of companies including Lloyds Bank and Inspire Defence.
What does the fund do?
Invests mainly in sterling investment grade and government bonds, but also looks at opportunities in the European and US credit market.
What is a stock you’re currently excited about in the portfolio?
Perhaps excited is the wrong word to use when you’re talking to a bond investor. A bond we’re interested in is Intu 2023, which is the owner of shopping centres across the UK and Spain such as Manchester’s Trafford Centre. While there is some volatility that comes with investing in the retail sector, we think the risk is worth it for the yield of 6.5%.
What is your best ever investment?
In 2014, an EDF 100-year bond was offering a coupon of 6%, which I invested in. But the price has risen so significantly that taking into account that and the coupon, the annual return, has been 20%. So bonds can be exciting sometimes!
And your worst?
It was on my 40th birthday in 2009. We had a small position in a building society up in Scotland called Dunfermline. It got taken over by Nationwide and we got basically zero.
What’s the stock you didn’t buy that you wish you had?
I wish we had exposure to the autos sector in 2008 and 2009, when there was a downgrade of General Motors and Ford. Unfortunately, we are still underweight the auto sector.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned?
That you are never an expert – you might have experience, but that’s different. It’s difficult to predict what’s going to happen in the market; it has the good habit of teaching you a lesson, so be humble when things go right because just around the corner something will go wrong.
What do you do in your spare time?
I usually spend my downtime watching sport. My football club is Liverpool and I am also a rigorous Indian cricket fan. I like cooking – my signature dish is lamb saag, which is weird given I’m vegetarian, but my family likes it.
If I weren’t a fund manager…
I would be a theatre actor. Being a fund manager is a bit like being on stage: you have to engage your clients, tell a story, and you need to think on your feet.
What’s the best thing about this industry?
That it’s like a quest and you are always learning; you can never be 100% sure of things. And, key for me, is that it’s a tremendously enriching career.
And what’s the worst?
The perception bias behind the industry, which is not just made of banks as many erroneously think. As a fund manager you try to accumulate wealth for your underlying clients, sometimes that is forgotten in the big picture.
