Unicorn's Walls: 'You cannot afford to take too much risk in these markets'

Considering biotech funds

Peter Walls, manager of Unicorn's Mastertrust fund, has restructured his fund of investment trusts to cope with market volatility, but is also eyeing opportunities in the biotech and mining sectors as discounts have widened in recent months.

The manager said his £29m fund is more diversified than it was two years ago, when his largest holding was more likely to have been around 5%, followed by similarly weighted stocks. Now his top ten holdings have around 3% each and his biggest holding, the Acorn Income fund, is just 3.6% of the total portfolio. He said: "You cannot afford to take too much risk in these markets as short-term volatility is here to stay." Walls, who has managed the fund since inception in December 2001, follows a contrarian investment approach and ‘recycles' capital from his winners into poor performin...