Nice fund, shame about the price

This small fund has an awful lot going for it. Unfortunately, it’s far too expensive.

Regular readers will know that I am always on the lookout for good funds. I don't think that there are many managers that are capable of regular outperformance, but I live in constant hope that over time a few may live up to their promises.

As far as I can see, there are a few characteristics that would give a fund the best of chances: it needs to be small; it needs to have a clear strategy; it has to be run by someone clever who has the focus and boredom threshold to enable them to stick to that strategy (constancy is really boring); it must have a value or a momentum bias; and it needs to be cheap.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.