Uncertain times call for nerves of steel for fund managers who must stay focused on the long term
INVESTORS DRIVEN by broad market trends in recent years will have ridden a roller coaster of emotions - and returns - as sentiment lurched through one crisis after another.
For a fund manager, therefore, the key to long-term outperformance is an ability to hold your nerve and avoid becoming a slave to market sentiment.
'It's fair to say over the last five years that the macro side of things has been very confusing,' said Martin Lau, director of Greater China Equities for First State Investments (HK).
'Investors have been confronted with concerns about the US economy, the Hong Kong property market, global demand, hard landings for China, a revaluation of the yuan, a collapse of the Hong Kong currency peg - the list goes on.'
Troubled and uncertain times they might have been, but few of these crises ever materialised.
