Another of the new entrants in this year’s rundown is Japan equity specialist James Pulsford, who has been investing in markets for almost 35 years, which includes 12 years based in Tokyo overseeing small-cap equity at what was Morgan Grenfell.

His performance is drawn from across his time at Eikoh, where he was chief investment officer, and Alma Capital, which he moved to formally at the start of 2020. He has overseen the Alma Eikoh Japan fund since 2014, with Tom Grew serving as co-portfolio manager from 2020.

Pulsford describes his investment style as a research-driven approach to investing in companies with growth potential at a reasonable price.

The fund, classified as Article 8 under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, operates with a strong, high conviction focus and aims to hold between 30-35 positions. Pulsford invests mainly in Japanese large-cap stocks, namely those with more than $1bn in revenue.

PANDEMIC POSITIONING

The fund weathered the beginning of the pandemic by cutting back overall exposure before rebuilding bets going into the latter part of 2020, Pulsford said. Meanwhile, he held onto a handful of fundamentally strong technology stocks throughout this period.

Looking ahead, the key concern is how to retain this outperformance. Pulsford said this will depend on being able to accurately judge how much the market pulls back as central bank support is withdrawn. ‘We will do this by adapting the fund structure, as well as through diligence, hard work and luck,’ he added.

The latest data for his $779m fund, which covered the period to the end of April 2022, showed Pulsford sticking keenly to his high-conviction emphasis, with just 33 allocations. This is while IT was a major overweight, comprising more than a quarter of total exposure, which is double the Topix weighting. Conversely, he was running significant underweights to the industrials and consumer discretionary sectors.