Artemis has announced that David Hollis will take over management of its multi-asset, absolute return vehicle, the Artemis Strategic Assets Fund, applying a systematic-based strategy to delivering returns for clients.
Hollis joined Artemis in October 2022 to develop systematic, multi-asset solutions for retail and institutional clients. He arrived from Eastspring Investments (Singapore), where he was lead multi-asset portfolio manager and managed $6.5bn in institutional and retail funds – including Eastspring’s multi-asset retail funds. Prior to joining Eastspring, he ran the RiskMaster multi-asset funds at Allianz.
He has been joined by Ralph Mahood, who was a previously a portfolio manager in the fixed income credit team at Aviva Investors.
Artemis CIO Paras Anand said: “The decision for David Hollis and the team to take over the Artemis Strategic Assets Fund has been driven by our conviction that the market-driven, model-based approach on which their investment process is based is particularly well suited to delivering the combination of absolute returns and capital preservation that holders of the fund are seeking. This holds even more true given what we expect to be a period of ongoing volatility at the overall asset class level for many of the markets in which the fund invests.”
New approach
Hollis said: “Over 24 years in the industry I’ve gravitated towards a quantitative, data-driven strategy. My time in Asia, where data is used in far more sophisticated ways, reinforced that.
“You can think of this as a ‘what happens when’ fund. I’ve developed and refined a suite of models that draw on historical data to predict how markets will respond in given economic scenarios. We can then use that information to target the trades with greatest upside potential.
“Models like this are not flawless – and part of the skill is knowing when they don’t work – but they can give you a very clear sense of the direction markets are heading in the short term. We will put most money behind the positions in which we have highest confidence. The new strategy will continue to target capital growth of more than CPI + 3% over five years, but with a lower realised level of volatility and a higher focus on overall capital preservation, with the aim of giving the investor a more stable return experience.”
The fund will continue to have a global reach, with Hollis and Mahood trading in all developed markets and will extend to some liquid Emerging Market equity and bond indices. At least 80% of the fund will be in relative value trades.
Hollis takes over the lead management of the fund from Kartik Kumar who has taken on additional responsibilities as the lead manager of the European Sustainable Growth fund.
