In this three-part video series, the FundCalibre team chat to Vincent Ropers, co-manager of the IFSL Wise Multi-Asset Growth fund, who explains how the fund is positioned to navigate today’s challenging investment landscape.
Vincent discusses opportunities in private equity, artificial intelligence and emerging markets, while highlighting the importance of valuation discipline and investing with a margin of safety.
He also explores the role of fixed income, credit and cash within the portfolio, explaining how the team balances risk, seeks attractive long-term returns and remains ready to take advantage of opportunities when markets become unsettled.
Why you should listen to the interview: Discover how the IFSL Wise Multi-Asset Growth fund approaches investing in a market environment shaped by uncertainty, high valuations and changing investor sentiment.
Vincent Ropers shares insights into where the team is finding value, how they manage risk and why flexibility, diversification and conviction remain central to their investment approach.
This interview was recorded on 6 July 2026. Please note, answers are edited and condensed for clarity. To gain a fuller understanding and clearer context, please listen to the full interview.
Interview highlights:
Value investing doesn’t mean boring
“The first thing to say is that it has been a very difficult market environment, and it has been so for months now. A lot of our managers are telling us that it is actually the most difficult market that they’ve had in their career. And some of them go back quite a few decades.
“It’s not necessarily driven by fundamentals, and it’s not a question of value versus growth. It’s just very, very difficult when you look at day-to-day moves in share prices to pinpoint exactly what is driving those moves.
“The way I look at it is that we’ve got three levers really at our disposal. The first one is asset allocation, which in this environment is very difficult. The second one, luckily, that we have at our disposal is fund selection. So that’s where we go and try and find the best fund managers out there. And the last one is timing.
“Having fund selection at our disposal is extremely important in a market like today, which is very difficult from an asset allocation point of view. We can rely on some of the best fund managers out there to provide us not only with returns, but also, more importantly, with some margin of safety.
“Another point that I would make is value doesn’t mean boring investing in the boring things. Everyone at the moment is getting excited, some might say overexcited, by AI and technology. Just because we’ve got a value bias doesn’t mean that we avoid those sectors completely. What it means is that we certainly don’t want to overpay for assets.
“The way we invest is mainly through investment trusts, and by having that tool in our toolbox, we can find many different ways to invest in those hot themes like AI and technology. It is very important to stay diversified and look for value where you can find it.”
Finding quality at the right price
“Why do we like private equity? I think in a nutshell, it’s a massive universe. You’ve got a lot more private companies than you have listed ones. What we particularly like about managers in the private equity sector is the access that you have to the data from the company, the direct roles that they often have, and the fact that they usually sit on boards of the companies.
“They can control the destiny of those companies. Over time, that translates into very attractive returns.
“On the question of valuations, specifically, I think the main point to make is that there are no advantages for a private equity manager to inflate their valuations. Private equity managers are paid on exit, when one of the companies that they own is sold, either by being listed on a public market, sold to another private equity fund, or sold to a competitor of that company that wants to acquire the business.
“It is at that point, when you’ve got a liquidity event, that private equity managers are paid. So there is no point really trying to over-inflate the valuation. All it would do is create some short-term volatility in the price of the fund, but the outcome at exit wouldn’t be any different.
“To give you a real-life example, RIT Capital Partners is one of our holdings in that space. They have invested in SpaceX for the past three or so years. SpaceX was last valued in December at $800 billion. The company later listed at $1.8 trillion and went as high as a $3 trillion valuation.
“Those are not fluctuations that we are seeing in the valuations of the trust yet. We will see them, but as a reminder, as of today, SpaceX is still valued at $800 billion on their book versus, let’s say, north of $2 trillion valuations in the listed market. If you can pick up an asset for $800 billion that is worth two or three times that, this is almost the definition of value investing in my mind.”
Why cash matters
“We don’t pretend to have any particular edge in forecasting where the macro economy is going.
Even if you thought you had an edge in forecasting the macro, that is very different from forecasting markets. What we do, however, is spend a lot of time trying to understand market positioning and investor sentiment. We do it systematically from one month to the next.
“Sentiment is clearly heating up. You see it in all the investor sentiment surveys out there, and positioning is getting quite stretched in quite a lot of areas. If you follow the flows, you can see that US equities continue to see a huge amount of positive inflows.
“That gets us a bit cautious. That’s why we raised our cash level to about 5.5%, which is still relatively modest, but for us it was a defensive positioning. Normally, we are between 2% and 3%. It’s just a way for us to make sure that we constantly stay on the front foot, that we’ve got ways to protect capital if volatility increases, and that we’ve got that capital ready to be redeployed into pockets of value that we see.
“We are always looking for those opportunities. It’s not really macro driven. It’s when things get a little too hot, we like to take our profits, keep a bit of cash, and then when opportunities are there, we’re ready to deploy it.”
Credit over government bonds
“When we look at fixed income, it’s for two reasons. It’s either because we think the risk/reward is particularly attractive, so we look at it from a total return standpoint, or because we are looking for a hedge to protect us against downside risks from our equity or equity-like positions.
“At the moment, because the main concern for markets is more inflation than growth, fixed income doesn’t act as a hedge for equity positions. If inflation is the risk, this is going to hurt fixed income probably more than it will hurt your equity positions to start with.
“That is what we’ve observed over the recent period: bonds actually, in a way, are riskier than equities. I’m talking about government bonds here. That’s why our exposure there is extremely limited because they don’t provide downside protection.
“We do like credit, however, and that’s where our exposure is concentrated. We’ve got positions in strategies that give us exposure to credit. Both have short-dated corporate bonds in investment grade, which means the risk is very limited, but because the starting yields are high, the total returns are quite attractive. You’re looking at anywhere from 6% to 8% expected total returns for those very low-risk strategies.
“The other way we access fixed income is through floating rates. The main attraction is that you haven’t got any duration risk. If inflation starts picking up and interest rates have to be raised in Europe, the UK or the US, then mechanically the returns on the securities they buy will increase because the interest rates increase automatically.”
Conclusion: Across this series, Vincent Ropers highlights the importance of patience, discipline and a long-term perspective when investing through uncertain markets.
By combining specialist fund selection, investment trusts and a focus on valuation, the IFSL Wise Multi-Asset Growth fund aims to uncover opportunities while protecting capital.
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Past performance is not a reliable guide to future returns. You may not get back the amount originally invested, and tax rules can change over time. The writer’s views are their own and do not constitute financial advice.
This information should not be relied upon by retail clients or investment professionals. Reference to any particular investment does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell the investment.
Main image: video interview, 2h-media-maXRdPd2INc-unsplash
