Cyclical calls help equity managers bounce back

UK equity managers profit from keen stockpicking and buying into "unloved" sectors

Leading equity managers have seen performance spikes of up to 30% last month through early contrarian calls on cyclicals and recently distressed areas of the market. Richard Buxton's Schroder UK Alpha Plus and Sanjeev Shah's Fidelity Special Situations funds significantly outperformed the 13.9% bounce for the IMA UK All Companies sector over the month to 6 April, returning 30.1% and 21.1% respectively. After consistently beating the benchmark for several years, Buxton's Alpha Plus started to underperform last September and has struggled to reach parity with its peer group since then. ...