First time round, Fidelity fund manager Anthony Bolton could rightly be described as a ‘star’.
As manager of the Fidelity Special Situations fund for an impressive 28 years, Bolton delivered annualised growth of 19.5%.
Despite some tough periods at the helm of that fund, few would argue that he was not a truly successful fund manager.
After retiring in 2007, Bolton decided to stage his surprise comeback in 2010. It quickly became apparently he was destined to be the Michael Schumacher of fund management.
Rather than picking up the baton again with a UK special situations fund, Bolton headed East to run the Fidelity China Special Situations investment trust.
The past three years have not gone as well as many would have hoped.
His new fund has delivered just 2.1% compared to 8.5% from the MSCI China index over three years. It currently trades at 86.2p a share, below its 100p a share launch price.
Here at Informed Choice, we didn’t back Anthony Bolton when this new fund was launched in 2010.
This wasn’t due to our opinion of Bolton; he was and remains a well respected and very experienced fund manager.
We do however tread cautiously when it comes to new fund launches, as we believe every investor should.
Where is the sense in leaping on board a new fund launch on day one? A far better approach is to wait and see how the manager gets on with his or her new strategy, team and resources.
Once a fund has established a three or five year track record, that is a reasonable time for investors to consider it for future investment.
Sadly it seems that the launch of Fidelity China Special Situations was much hyped and failed to deliver the results investors would have expected to receive.
We can’t blame Fidelity (or the discount fund supermarkets who jumped on the China Special Situations bandwagon) for making the most of a pretty special marketing opportunity. This is after all what fund providers and many fund supermarkets do.
What we can do as advisers and investors is behave a little more rationally, ignore the marketing hype and invest in funds based on our individual goals and objectives.
We wish Anthony Bolton all the best for his (second) retirement and look forward to seeing what his successor, Dale Nicholls, is capable of doing with the fund from next April.
