A 27-minute listen.

The latest guest in our ongoing investment series is Mark Dampier, research director at Hargreaves Lansdown, who talks about the structural problems of the FTSE and why Warren Buffett wouldn’t last a year in the UK funds space.

Having spent many years interviewing fund managers, Mark recognises the challenges for stockpickers in a marketplace which he says hasn’t really been changed by the crash.

“There’s a problem for active managers that since 2009 the one style trend has been growth, led by the US market, and that hasn’t changed,” he says.

“With the fall in the market, you might expect those with the biggest profits to see the biggest falls. We’ve seen the opposite. In fact, FAANG tech stocks have performed better and led the market up.”

Closer to home, Mark sees more structural problems with the UK market which leads him to favour global funds.

“The FTSE is pretty moribund, full of oil majors, banks, and insurance companies, which are not exactly dynamic,” he remarks.

“If you look at global funds, particularly global income funds, you’ll see they just have a much better choice of investments”.

While he may be recognised as the greatest investor of our time, Mark is not so convinced that Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett would thrive as a UK retail fund manager. It’s a sign, he says, of the increasingly short-termist nature of investors.

He explains: “He’s had long-term flat periods and half a dozen drawdowns of over 30% in the past 25 years. Can you see that working in UK retail, where the average holding period is less than three years?”