I’ve been reading a lot of reports that this is going to be a good period for active fund managers. Many of these reports, you may be surprised to learn, come from active fund managers themselves. Intuitively, you would expect a widening dispersal of security returns to be reflected in a wider range of fund returns for the same period, and research does indeed back this up. That doesn’t necessarily work in favour of active management per se, however. Nevertheless, my innate cynicism aside, volatility can be the stock picker’s friend. Dispersal of returns is supposed to be fertile ground

The short-term volatility of U.K. domiciled mutual funds is beginning to normalize after peaking in the aftermath of the “Brexit” result of the U.K.’s European Union referendum on June 24, 2016. The featured graph (above) shows the daily rolling ten-day volatility of funds in the Lipper Global Fund Classifications, popular in the U.K., going back one year. The short-term volatility spike evident post “Brexit”- vote can be seen clearly across most sectors, but it has been most marked in the U.S. and U.K. equities classifications. A similar spike in short-term fund volatility was seen in the aftermath of the China