Alastair Unwin, Deputy Manager, Polar Capital, 'the avoidance of hubris', Episode 57

Investing Matters

Scale matters more in an Artificial Intelligence world, which is why the Magnificent 7 and other Ai and AI enabler stocks are outperforming their other tech related peers and far outstripping almost every other listed investment sector.

Here is a wonderfully insightful Investing Matters interview with Alastair Unwin, the Deputy Portfolio Manager of Polar Capital Holdings’ UK FTSE 250 listed Polar Capital Technology Trust (PCT) which has a market cap £2.95bn*. PCT on the day of recording* had registered a performance year to date of +40.66% in 2023. Additionally, the Trust had also achieved a 10 years CAGR of 17.83%*.

Alastair Unwin has a First-class Honours Degree in History from the University of Cambridge; he is CFA Charter holder, and he has over 12 years investment industry experience. He joined Polar Capital in June 2019 as a Fund Manager. Prior to joining Polar Capital, Alastair co-managed the Arbrook American Equities Fund. Between 2014 and 2018 he launched and then managed the Neptune Global Technology Fund and managed the Neptune US Opportunities Fund. Prior to Neptune, Alastair was a technology analyst at Herald Investment Management where he worked with the legendary Katie Potts.

This fascinating and artificial intelligence inspired Investing Matters interview with Alastair Unwin the Deputy Portfolio Manager of Polar Capital Technology Trust discussion includes:

-An overview of the Polar Capital Technology Trust (PCT)team, investing strategy and philosophy

-What is Artificial Intelligence

-What is Generative Artificial Intelligence

-Ai enablers

-Ai adopters

-Ai beneficiaries

-Sell discipline

-“Change is non-linear”

-Avoidance of hubris

-Valuation and overconfidence

-Risks to Ai’s exponential growth

-Network effects

-OpenAi debacle

-What counts as a smallcap?

-Arista Networks, cloud networking solutions

-Crowdstrike, Palo Alto Networks, Cybersecurity AI

- A Cloud-first world

-Apple’s dominance

-The importance of diversification

-Personal investing strategy

-Book: The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton M Christensen

-Charity and community work

- Inflection points

-Amazon

-Google

-Microsoft

- Nvidia’s stellar growth

- Polar Capital Technology Trust’s (PCT) long-term outperformance

& much more

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