The pace of the change happening in technology is such that investors need to show “intellectual humility”, according to Matthew Ward.
Ward, recently took over as joint manager of the £1.2bn Axa Framlington Global Technology fund, having joined from Axa Investment Managers from Barings in January.
He jointly runs a range of technology funds with James Dowey, who was hired from Liontrust. Both men replaced Jeremy Gleeson, a long-established technology investor.
Principal among the funds they are running is the £1.2bn Axa Framlington Global Technology fund.
Ward said: “It is an established fund and client base, and we were brought in. There are significant changes happening and we are refreshing the fund to reflect that.
“One of the things we have changed is to bring in more AI exposure, we added to our holding in Nvidia during the ‘deep seek moment’.
“Our priority is to invest in innovative companies, because innovative companies compound their earnings at twice the rate of the market, and technology companies are the most innovative.
“We think there are 1,000 companies in the universe we can invest in, and 150 we focus on.”
However, he said the rate of change means managers have to be prepared to be wrong.
Ward added: “This year has taught us to be prepared to be wrong, to have intellectual humility – such is the rate of change.
“Even in the past few weeks, Nvidia’s results didn’t excite while Broadcom made people think a move away from GPUs was happening, then Nvidia brought out a new chip which caught people’s attention.
“Then Oracle came out with results which showed a staggering bookings number, we have never seen anything like it.”
According to Ward, the market has “flipped on its head”. He explained: “It used to be that infrastructure was short duration, and software was five plus years of revenue.
“But now, it is 10 years and more for infrastructure deals, while we do not know what the outlook is for software.”
