Sitting in fourth spot is Artemis’s Stephen Snowden, who joined the UK group from rivals Kames (now Aegon Asset Management) to lead its fixed income unit in 2019. When asked to describe his investment process, Snowden cuts straight to the point: ‘Active’.

‘Unlike a great growth stock, bonds have a finite life and therefore a finite value,’ he said. ‘When a “good” bond gets fully priced, it’s expensive and therefore a poor investment until it matures. In bonds you have to recycle your winners, rather than ride them.’

Recent successes for Snowden’s active approach included purchasing corporate bonds in mid-2020, just prior to huge swathes of central bank support being pumped into the system to alleviate pandemic pressure. ‘We learnt from the last decade that when markets panic, central banks jump in.

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DON’T WAIT FOR THE BOUNCE

‘Unfortunately, in the corporate bond market waiting for the bounce doesn’t work. Prices rally in a vacuum and bargains are nigh on impossible to source after the turn. Being willing to be wrong before you are right is stressful but profitable,’ he said.

However, Snowden has one eye on the future, as the QE support cannot last forever. This means the sterling bond investor is looking to history and a pre-global financial crisis period which lacked the levels of central bank support seen today. ‘Without this safety net, we expect volatility to increase. Panics and snapbacks will be more frequent and acute. In a QE world you were paid to be fully invested. In a non-QE world, you have to be nimble. Basically, we need larger cash positions to pick up bargains in the inevitable panics.’

The cash position in the fund, which has £717m (€843m) in assets, is not sizeable at present, as it accounted for around 1.5% in the most available data before this publication went to press. Where Snowden and his co-manager Grace Le had been putting capital to work was in banks, which account for one-fifth of the portfolio, while utilities, real estate and insurance also had double-digit exposure.