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If 2025 taught investors anything, it’s that they need to think actively about how they preserve capital through a period of global fragmentation and, consequently, increased market volatility. The old rules for doing so have been challenged. A 60/40 portfolio split between equities and bonds, for instance, serves little purpose when both asset classes perform similarly in the face of market disruption.

Absolute return strategies provide investors with an alternative way to seek protection when traditional assets like US treasuries fail to provide it. The allocations of these funds are not constrained by any index or market weightings. This leaves them well-positioned to deliver returns that are uncorrelated with the majority of today’s funds – especially passive index trackers.

The value of allocating towards uncorrelated alpha streams became evident following the aftermath of April’s Liberation Day. Global equity markets fell around 20 per cent during the sell-off. Many investors realised how exposed their portfolios had become to such volatility, since they had grown progressively more reliant on US equities. When the S&P fell, they had little room to hide. Absolute return strategies, by contrast, are designed to reduce volatility across a portfolio of holdings, by investing irrespective of market, benchmark, geography, style, or other biases.

One way to achieve this is by focusing exclusively on bottom-up research, which can mitigate the impact of macro volatility that can disrupt entire regions and sectors. An absolute return strategy will not invest in a US tech company just because it’s a US tech company and sits within a pre-defined investment universe, for example. A US tech stock has just as much chance of appearing in an absolute return portfolio as an Indonesian textiles manufacturer or a German food producer.

Combine that diverse bucket of equities into one portfolio, unconstrained by style or geography biases, and you have a ready-made diversifier that could provide some shelter for portfolios primed for turbulence.

Matt Jones

Matt Jones

Portfolio Manager

Hiten Savani

Hiten Savani

Portfolio Manager