Traditionally, investors have allocated to government bonds to provide portfolio insurance when stockmarkets have tumbled. This has been effective in the past, but with yields depressed to miniscule levels after more than a decade of quantitative easing, their efficacy to reprise this role is much diluted. Absolute return funds, in theory at least, therefore provide one of the few ways in which investors can now build protection into a portfolio.
Unfortunately, the performance of the absolute return fund sector as a whole in recent years does not corroborate the theory.
As can be seen in the chart above, the absolute return sector saw impressive growth in assets under management until 2018, peaking at £82bn.