But the bulk of the company’s style fund business, at present worth £1.3bn, comes from funds of funds and other semi-institutional investors. At Schroder, the entire range of seven style funds attracted just £30m in its two and a half year existence, before the decision was made to merge or close them as part of a wider reorganisation.The head of sales, Robin Stoakley, says: “Clients are investing less than they were three years ago, and they are definitely not opting for narrowly focused funds like these. And it’s going to be a tough job to shoehorn the Acacia Avenue semi into some high-flown European agenda.w.kay independent.co.ukWilliam Kay is Personal Finance Editor of ‘The Independent’. Are you in style as an investor? The bursting of the tech bubble demolished investors’ portfolios precisely because they were so lopsided.

Most were weighted down by growth stocks and funds full of promise, with barely a staid, value-biased investment in sight. But it’s hard to be convinced “style investing”, the term coined by fund-management houses to promote the idea of combining specialist growth and specialist value funds to create a lower-risk, better-diversified portfolio has really caught on in a big way, in the UK. Although the stable of style funds pioneered in the UK and Europe by JP Morgan Fleming in February, 2000, has weathered the investment troubles of the past three years, Schroder has withdrawn its style products from the market, and no comparable offerings have appeared.The principle of style investing, as preached by JPMF and widely practised in the US, is straightforward. During some periods in the investment cycle, growth stocks (successful stocks which are expected to continue to do well) will outperform value stocks (sound but unfashionable and therefore cheap at the price); during other periods, it will be the other way round.If investors could call the market accurately and switch styles at the right time, all is well: but timing is difficult to get right. JPMF’s UK Strategic Value fund, 13 per cent up over three years, is in the top 3 per cent of UK All Companies funds over that period (there is no UK Strategic Growth, and the other style funds are based offshore).Lipper figures as at 1 July, show it has only £21m in retail funds under management.

Growth stocks are those where earnings are growing faster than the market average, and where the company is producing a flow of good news. But one style stable has not only survived the bear market but thrived, and the other has disappeared. But Chris Complin, head of JPMF’s European strategy team, says “style drift” can mean trouble.”Without a clearly defined style signature, you may think your portfolio is split 50/50 between value and growth, but gradual structural changes by fund managers mean the weighting is not equal in reality. Typically, that occurs in the face of a market showing no interest in an unfashionable fund: it happened in many equity income funds in the tech boom.”Style funds differ significantly from traditional funds, in that they select stocks primarily on the basis of one specific measure of value or growth, rather than attempting to pick individual winners. Any that fit the style criteria can join the party, but they will be booted out unceremoniously if their characteristics change too far.JPMF’s selection of value stocks is based primarily on their price/earnings ratio, although checks are made to ensure the exclusion of stocks that are cheap for good reason, such as poor growth prospects, or have any other problems. The argument goes that it is easier and safer to create a balanced portfolio split equally between the two styles, and get timing out of the picture.It is possible to use a selection of conventional growth and equity income funds to achieve a decent measure of protection in this way.

But Professor Miles has encountered the towering cultural barriers against change that either bedevil or enrich the UK housing market, depending on your point of view. And fourth, who knows what interest rates are going to be in five years, let alone 25?We have yet to see exactly what Mr Brown has in mind about long-term mortgages, and what he is prepared to do to encourage us in that direction. First, they remortgage every four years and move house every six years, so they are not accustomed to looking far ahead. Second, the mortgage market is so ferociously competitive over deals up to two years that borrowers are not encouraged to look beyond their noses.Third, neither lenders nor brokers nor the media spend much time explaining the virtues of longer-term evaluations.