Laurence Hulse of Onward Opportunities with Alyx Wood of Kernow Asset Management

In the Company of Mavericks

Today I am joined by two young active UK equity fund managers with distinct investment styles.

Alyx Wood is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Kernow Asset Management. Kernow is a contrarian investor using fundamental analysis and catalyst-driven mean reversion investing. Alyx is a long-short investor.

Laurence Hulse is a Director of Dowgate Wealth. He is the fund manager of the recently launched investment company Onward Opportunities Ltd.

Onward Opportunities' strategy is to pursue inefficiencies in the UK market for small and micro-cap companies. It is a long-only strategy.

Laurence explains his background and how he fell for the style of investing, which he describes as engaged activism, using a velvet glove, not a boxing glove.

He gives us examples of how this strategy has been effective in the past, and we talk about the current UK market conditions in which Laurence is launching this new vehicle.

Alyx and Laurence are maverick investors among today’s market participants who are often passive trackers, index huggers, or trend followers.

This was a fascinating discussion about how professional investors seek to outperform with strategies that Alyx describes as suiting their personalities.

In Alyx’s capacity as a family office manager, he describes why he likes the strategy of Onward Opportunities and how it compliments his investment style.

I greatly enjoyed this chat. I learnt a lot. I hope you do too.