Your absolute return fund checklist

Until a few years ago, the retail fund universe consisted almost exclusively of long-only funds investing in equities, bonds or property. Investors could choose between passive (index tracking) or active styles (stock picking with the aim of generating outperformance against the market). Either way, the systematic risk of the asset class dominated returns. This risk proved to be volatile over time, while outperformance by active styles was far from assured. UCITS III, however, has brought a wider variety of strategies to the retail investor. Amongst those, absolute return funds have c...