SLI GARS: The trades that contributed to our Q1 underperformance

Fund suffered worst quarter since financial crisis

The Standard Life Investments' GARS team have described a "quarter of two halves" as the fund struggled to bounce back from underperformance at the start of the year.

The £26bn Global Absolute Return Strategies fund was down 3.3% during the three months to 31 March according to FE. Over the past year, the fund is down 4.8% accroding to FE versus losses of 0.7% by the IA Targeted Absolute Return sector. This is the worst quarterly performance for the absolute return fund since the Lehmans crisis in September 2008. In a webcast with Adam Rudd, who sits on the multi-asset team headed up by Guy Stern (pictured), Rudd said the worst contributor to performance was a short US duration position, which lost 0.9% and has since been reduced. Other poorly-p...