MAB Quarterly Review Q1 2026 - Adventurous - Flipbook - Page 9
articles were aplenty on why “value investing” was
dead. Some very experienced value-oriented fund
managers who had been successful investors for
multiple decades came under great pressure and
in some cases their employers cracked and the fund
managers lost their jobs, just before the dot-com
bubble burst and the value investing style returned
to the fore.
In more recent decades, many managers adopting
what is known as a “quality” investment style had
been extremely successful in outperforming their
relevant market benchmarks for a prolonged
period. These managers, who seek to invest
in well-managed, 昀椀nancially strong, relatively
predictable but steadily growing companies with
sustainable competitive advantages, had in many
cases performed extremely well for over a decade.
However, over the last two years these strategies
have fallen hugely out of favour globally, in some
cases as the underlying quality companies had
become relatively expensive for their more modest
levels of growth, in some cases as the market has
been more attracted to higher growth potential in
other market segments (such as AI related business
or defence companies) and in other cases due to
a fear that with the rapid emergence of AI and its
increasing application in many industries, some
previously robust and durable business models that
had grown steadily for multiple decades (especially
software related businesses) may come under
competitive pressure for the 昀椀rst time. Once again, in
many regional equity markets this sharp style reversion
has coincided with some more value-oriented
managers returning to the fore once more.
When the market’s prevailing preference for a
particular investment style changes, sadly no one
rings a bell to let us know. Decades of experience
teach us that there are many different styles of
investing that, if implemented diligently and with
discipline, can work well and outperform over long
periods. However, over shorter cycles, investment
styles can come quite violently in and out of favour.
This is why by maintaining a broad range of actively
managed investment styles in your Fund, with
these being executed by experienced and adept
fund managers that our team has researched in
great detail, we aim to reduce reliance on any one
outcome and build portfolios that are more robust
and able to deliver on our objectives even as market
conditions continually evolve.
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