Video: Three investment strategies for the pessimist Absolute funds try to deliver positive returns, however anaemic, come rain or shine. This in theory requires skill, and the need to find "uncorrelated" investments which perform in contrasting ways to the same market conditions. Mr Lanning achieves this by investing in approximately 25 funds at any time. It sounds counter-intuitive, but I don't want actually want all the portfolio to go up at once, because if it all goes up at once, it could all go down at once too. Overall, Mr Lanning is more positive about the economic outlook than he was six months ago, and that includes in the Eurozone and the United States. In some respects that makes his fund more unfashionable. If you are very very positive about the world, this fund is going to look very pedestrian. It's deliberately positioned for low-risk investors who want to take that first step away from the bank or building society deposit, but they don't want to put their monies at the vagaries of the stock market. About a third of the fund is invested in fixed interest products, and having taken profits on gold earlier in the year, the holding is now more-or-less the highest it has ever been. Gold is being driven by quantitative easing and the fear of financial assets, and I don't necessarily see a reason why that should disappear in the short term.