Every drawdown since 1998

There have been nineteen drawdowns of more than 5% since the firm opened on 1 October 1998. The full list, with the start date, trough, depth and months to recover for each, is sent with every mandate summary.

We report them because an annualised return hides the path taken to reach it. A client who joined in 2007 and a client who joined in 2010 own the same mandate and have lived through different decades of it.

The deepest was 2008 and 2009. The longest to recover was 2000 to 2003. The most recent of consequence was 2022, when the gilt book was still at eleven years of duration. It was cut to under six in early 2023 and the reasoning is in that quarter’s report.

The composites behind these figures have been verified each year since 2008 by a firm we pay for nothing else. The record itself starts in 1998, and the years before 2008 are presented as our own, which is what they are.