Contrarian: Why we need competition for GARS

The idea of absolute return investing generates an enormous amount of hot air and vitriolic debate for what is a relatively small amount of money.

Very successful offerings such as Standard Life’s GARS (arguably the real powerhouse behind its parent’s stellar share price performance) might be taking in a huge quantity of money, but in truth it is more mainstream equity income and Asian funds that are the true giants of the funds space; probably rightly so given their pedigree and simplicity of concept. It is also true many column inches of contrarian worrying may be sparked by the success of GARS-like funds but my hunch is very few people I know are actually invested in either the fund or its peers – which arguably underlines the h...