ED&F Man has formed a joint venture with Manuel de Bonneval called Man-Fidex which seeks returns by betting on turning- points in price trends within the markets.

Bonneval, who used to look after funds in France for Société Générale, seeks to focus his mind on opportunities by investing imaginary sums in backing trends. The "investments' are tracked though Bonneval's computer. Immediately a trend reverses and a virtual investment starts losing money he backs the change with real funds. He tracks the new trend to a diminishing extent over a period. When the trend changes again or other opportunities arise, money is invested elsewhere. Bonneval looks after a total of $80m (E77.6m), which produced 7.2% uncorrelated with markets in the year to November. Man believes that his process could work well in tandem with a trend-following process, such as Pan Yiannakou's Man-Vector system which the firm is also launching. Man-Fidex and Man-Vector represent the latest of a string of 130 computer-driven alternative investment programmes started by Man over many years. Its first joint venture was with Larry Hite's Mint in 1983, which sought to make money from anomalies in the commodity markets. After a fantastic early run, Mint is now not working at all well. But the distribution network set up to service it, led by marketing dynamo John Kelly, is behind the development of funds now totalling $4.5bn. The success of the investment business has not been fully recognised by the stock market because of the challenges faced by Man in running a commodities business. Man has now made hefty charges against its commodities business to pave the way for a buy-out. Its shares have risen accordingly.