Fidelity's Shah: Banks and miners have hit returns

An underweight to the commodities sector and a heavy overweight to financials has hit performance on the Fidelity Special Situations fund over the last year.

Sanjeev Shah, manager of the £3bn fund, has failed to find contrarian stocks ideas within the sector, preferring unloved financials, which have remained subdued by sovereign risk pressures. Over one year to 10 January the fund returned 13.7%, ranking it 172 out of 298 funds in the UK All Companies sector. This compares to a return of13.1% over three years, placing it in the top quartile. "Performance in the shorter term has been weak, driven by our underweight to commodities. "I am struggling to find ideas in commodities and industrials, and we have very strong underweights there. ...