Mark Barnett has had a stinker of a year. The manager of Pigit (Perpetual Income & Growth Investment Trust) reported a 9.6 per cent net asset value total return for this UK-focused investment vehicle for the year to the end of March — which sounds fine. Except that his benchmark, the FTSE All-Share, notched up a 22 per cent return over the same period. Worse still was Pigit’s actual share price total return — a measly 4.2 per cent.
This was a very poor year by Pigit’s normally strong standards. The main problem was Mr Barnett’s reluctance to hold commodity stocks. This served him well in the previous couple of years as the mining bubble deflated, but was a serious headwind this time as raw