The recent performance of Artemis SmartGARP Global Equity has been uninspiring, mainly owing to its focus on value stocks and significant position in emerging markets. Peter Saacke, the fund’s manager since 2004, is a ‘growth at a reasonable price’ (GARP) investor, looking for companies he thinks are attractively valued but have the potential to grow. He uses Artemis’s in-house quantitative screening tool, SmartGARP, to screen a firm’s finances to help spot winners and keep decision-making objective. He then carries out his own stock-specific due diligence to ensure there is a real investment story behind any good SmartGARP score. As well as helping him to establish what to buy and when, the system alerts him to problems with existing holdings.

October 2020