What this South African boutique can teach us about diversification

What we can learn from this South African boutique

You have probably not heard of Fairtree Capital? I hadn't until recently when I met two of its directors and another portfolio manager as they stopped off in London briefly.

It is a South Africa-based boutique which specialises in local market long/short equity strategies and a couple of multi-asset and multi-strategy funds, some of which are established as Cayman Islands feeder funds. For the vast majority of UK-based investors, having exposure to South African equities or a South African multi-asset fund must seem incredibly specialised. It might even look risky, purely because exposure to a single market is always deemed to be a higher risk investment decision, even though ironically the vast majority of investors in this country are heavily exposed to...