When “star” fund manager Neil Woodford fell to earth in 2019 with the collapse of the Woodford Equity Income fund, Terry Smith was widely touted in the media as a more reliable stockpicker.
He had outperformed the market, albeit for a short time, and, like the Woodford of old, he focused on buying and holding high-quality businesses, while steering clear of capital-intensive, highly cyclical or heavily regulated sectors such as mining, utilities and banks. He definitely looked the part.
Alas, it wasn’t long before Smith too was shown to have feet of clay. By late 2021, his flagship Fundsmith Equity fund had begun to lag the market, and, despite a brief uplift in performance last year, the fund has struggled in 2024. In the six months to the end of June, it returned 9.3 per cent, compared with 12.7 per cent, in sterling terms, for the MSCI World Index.
Why, then, has Fundsmith Equity failed to deliver in recent times? In one word, NVIDIA. The chip maker’s shares have soared in value since May 2023, but Smith has chosen to stay on the sidelines. “We do not own any NVIDIA,” he wrote in his semi-annual letter to shareholders, “as we have yet to convince ourselves that its outlook is as predictable as we seek.”
Smith’s failure to invest in NVIDIA illustrates a point that is crucial to understanding why beating the index is so difficult.
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