Ann: Video update from Chief Investment Officer and Chairman, page-187

I think what you initially refer to is the notion of "downside protection" in a portfolio. Or in other words the intrinsic and in-built defensive nature of a portfolio to withstand shocks through being overweight in consumer staples and discretionary stocks. It's a theory I don't buy into, but it used to be be thrown about a lot by Hamish, although he may have quietly dropped it from his vocabulary lately. I'm not sure if there are any academic studies that show that "downside protection" is quantifiable as a factor or even statistically significant, but I'd be skeptical on both counts.

The other issue you touched on is concentration risk in a small group of selected stocks, which imo is often overlooked by investors. It's a high-risk strategy for which I don't believe investors are adequately compensated for in a managed fund relative to the risk they are taking.

The MFG alibaba and tencent purchases are a classic example of concentration risk playing out to the downside. I don't think these purchases were necessarily terrible decisions as most commentary at the time was talking up the virtues of the middle-class Chinese consumer, which in theory still makes sense (sort of). However the concentration risk coupled with MFG's fundamental misread of the political landscape in China combined in a very damaging way.