Stock pickers are being let off the leash in the wake of falling equity markets and as both retail and institutional investors learn to choose their own risk/return levels.

In the past three months Royal & SunAlliance Investments, Deutsche Asset Management, Aegon Asset Management and Invesco Perpetual have all launched concentrated UK equity portfolios. The portfolios hold between 30 and 40 stocks only and target high outperformance or performance unrelated to any benchmark.