The Unloved Funds Coming Up Roses

Editor's Views: Our Unloved Funds strategy has proved very lucrative over 25 years, why your credit score matters, and the dangers of buying Bitcoin right now

Holly Black 12 February, 2021 | 11:12AM
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At Morningstar, we talk a lot about value investing, being contrarians and looking at out-of-favour areas for opportunities. Well more than your average person does anyway. And while the theory looks all well and good on paper and I do pay heed to it in my own portfolio (I hold a UK smaller companies and a frontiers investment trust, among others), sometimes it’s not until you find a good ol’ chart showing you the magic that you really see the benefit. Which is why I loved the analysis this week by my colleague Valerio Baselli of Morningstar’s “Buy the Unloved” strategy, now in its 25th year.

In case you missed it, with this strategy you buy three equity funds – one from each of the three least popular Morningstar categories as denoted by outflows – and hold them for three years. Then sell and repeat the exercise.

Starting the strategy in 1994 with a pot of $10,000 (our friends in the US did the numbers) would have got you to $183,155 by the end of 2020. And if you’d have stuck with funds in the most popular categories? You’d have just $57,708.

Growth of 10k in Unloved Funds

I find this even more compelling because it’s the US stock market we’re talking about in this example – a market dominated by big tech and big growth, where you really don’t think of the underdog winning out.

Taking contrarian positions isn’t easy. That frontiers trust of mine? It’s not doing well. And the UK smaller companies one had a very bad 18 months before it turned around. And it’s sometimes difficult to ignore the market noise when your job is to write about it every day – there have been many times I’ve thought I should dump my holdings and just buy the same big names as everyone else. (I’ll point out that not all of my portfolio is so dicey).

At a time when the big names keep getting bigger and the frenzy of stocks such as GameStop sees investors piling in to follow the crowd, the Unloved research really shows that daring to bet against the herd can reap rewards. If you’re brave enough. We need more charts like this.

Credit Matters

The scariest areas of finance are those we don’t properly understand. And that puts credit ratings up there with the scariest of them all.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who grew up believing some houses were entirely blacklisted, and if the previous owner had debts, they could ruin your credit score for life. Not true, it turns out.

Yes this week we looked at some of the myths around credit scores and, more importantly, some of the facts. This stuff is worth knowing, because it affects your ability to get a loan, mortgage or credit card and, crucially, it is within your power to change. Many people won’t realise, for example, that you have the right to put a notice of correction or clarification on your record. Or you might not know that you have a right to know why you were refused credit.

Now, I’m not saying you need to fully understand how each credit agency tallies up its score for you – there’s definitely a bit of wizardry involved in that – but you should know the very simple things you can do to boost your score, such as registering to vote and not using more than 90% of your credit limit, because there’s only one person who loses out from not doing these things: you.

Bitcoin Mania  

Speaking of contrarian investing, the meteoric rise in Bitcoin at the moment is making me feel uneasy. Sure, if I had a time machine, I might go back and make myself a millionaire out of it, but unfortunately I don’t.

As a lay investor I can only make decisions based on the information I have and the trouble with Bitcoin is that is has no fundamentals to assess. Its price is purely based on sentiment, so much so that it’s hard to think of a reasonable comparison.

We talk about the gold price being based on sentiment, but it is ultimately tied to the value of a shiny metal I can hold in my hands and intrisincally linked to the supply chain of an entire global industry. Bitcoin? Not so much. Yet swathes of traders have taken the news of Tesla buying into the cryptocurrency as a big fat buy signal. I don’t know how much further the price has to go, but I’m fairly certain it will be coming back down.

The information contained within is for educational and informational purposes ONLY. It is not intended nor should it be considered an invitation or inducement to buy or sell a security or securities noted within nor should it be viewed as a communication intended to persuade or incite you to buy or sell security or securities noted within. Any commentary provided is the opinion of the author and should not be considered a personalised recommendation. The information contained within should not be a person's sole basis for making an investment decision. Please contact your financial professional before making an investment decision.

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About Author

Holly Black  is Senior Editor, Morningstar.co.uk

 

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