Darius McDermott: Assessing the almost-indefensible absolute return sector

A lack of performance in the absolute return space has been matched by the challenge of comparing funds in what has become a convoluted sector with the likes of long-only; long/short; UK centric; global and fixed interest funds just some of the variants thrown in. They've been out of favour for some time and with good reason: the average fund in the sector has returned 2.5% and 6.6% in the past three and five years respectively, according to FE Analytic data. But it's the disparity in performance that is really concerning. Over three years, the best performer has returned more than 40...