One key ingredient for successful stock market investing is choosing the right hunting ground – targeting areas where companies are growing faster than the global economy. The technology sector is a classic example, often outpacing global GDP, even if only by a few percentage points. To uncover even more compelling opportunities, tech-focused fund manager Inge Heydorn goes a step further by identifying powerful investment themes that tap into even larger and more enduring sources of growth.

Thematic Approach

“The tech industry is growing faster than global GDP, but we’re only talking about one or two percent a year – that’s not enough. We need to find stronger growth and more compelling opportunities,” says Inge Heydorn, who co-manages technology-focused long-only and long/short equity funds alongside Jenny Hardy. “What we’re looking for are segments within technology that not only grow faster, but also offer the potential to make money. Even in high-growth areas, profitability can be hard to achieve if there are low barriers to entry, too many players, or intense competition,” he explains. “It’s not just about growth – it’s about finding segments with structure, where dominant players are emerging and where the growth can translate into profits and returns.”

Thematic investing is particularly well suited to the technology sector, where innovation tends to emerge in waves, driven by transformative trends such as artificial intelligence, digitalization, and cybersecurity. “For us, that’s how technology really works,” says Heydorn. “There are always areas within tech that are moving and evolving.” For example, Heydorn was heavily invested in cloud companies early in the shift from server-based applications to cloud solutions, around the time of the global financial crisis. “Back then, the money was moving away from buying servers for the office toward outsourcing data to the cloud. It was a very powerful trend and it’s one that still continues today.”

“To succeed, we need to think long term and stick with a strategy over time. That’s the best way to approach tech…You need staying power and a long-term mindset.”

This is just one example of the kinds of long-term trends – and the winners they produce – that asset managers can capitalize on over a five- to ten-year horizon. “To succeed, we need to think long term and stick with a strategy over time,” emphasizes Heydorn. “That’s the best way to approach tech, because as you’ve probably seen in recent months, it’s always difficult to time the market. You need staying power and a long-term mindset.”

Short Term Tactical Adjustments

Despite maintaining a long-term investment horizon, Heydorn and Jenny Hardy closely monitor short-term developments in company fundamentals, down to the finer details. They carefully assess quarterly results and guidance provided during earnings releases and calls, adjusting portfolio weights accordingly. “If we really dig into the 30 names in our long portfolio, I can promise that we’ll find very strong data points and indications for six or seven of them that they’re likely to post solid results and offer a positive outlook. That’s when we increase our positions,” explains Heydorn. Conversely, there are often five or six holdings where the data points suggest weaker performance ahead. “So why not reduce those positions around the event? We’re quite active in trading around earnings,” he adds.

“We don’t rotate names in and out of the portfolio frequently, because we want to know everything about the companies we invest in.”

These short-term tactical decisions are driven by highly granular data across a wide range of indicators – including detailed import and export figures from Korea and Taiwan, global data center vacancy rates, and available market capacity, among many others. “We don’t rotate names in and out of the portfolio frequently, because we want to know everything about the companies we invest in,” says Heydorn. “We build our own models and work to understand all aspects of the business and its drivers, both in the short and long term.” These insights into quarterly expectations give Heydorn an additional source of potential outperformance, complementing the long-term gains from riding high-conviction structural trends.

AI is Driving Everything

Nonetheless, the cornerstone of Heydorn’s investment strategy remains thematic exposure. Both the long/short Finserve Chelverton Thyra Fund and the long-only Finserve Chelverton Global Tech Fund maintain significant positions in cloud services, artificial intelligence, semiconductor capital equipment, and software efficiency. “The interesting thing now is that AI has become a layer on top of all of this, AI is driving everything,” says Heydorn. “We believe the market is underestimating its impact and focusing on the wrong aspects, which is quite fascinating,” he adds. “And normally, I’m pretty skeptical about these kinds of things,” notes the former Ericsson analyst.

“The interesting thing now is that AI has become a layer on top of all of this, AI is driving everything.”

Heydorn remains “super convinced” about the positive long-term prospects for the tech sector, expecting the semiconductor industry, for instance, to double in size by 2030. The strategic importance of the semiconductor industry is just one reason it has been spared from tariffs by the U.S. administration. “Semiconductors weren’t included because they’re absolutely critical. You don’t want to derail your own AI ambitions; you want to lead the future. Even Trump understands that,” says Heydorn. And while tariffs may aim to push manufacturing into high-cost countries like the U.S., this shift will require massive investment, particularly in technology and semiconductors. “That’s only going to fuel demand even further in those regions.”

Running Both Long-Only and Market-Neutral Portfolios

Structural themes not only create winners – they also produce losers, making them well-suited for the market-neutral strategy managed by Inge Heydorn and Jenny Hardy. The long-only Finserve Chelverton Global Tech Fund has delivered an annualized return of 24 percent since its launch at the beginning of 2019 through the end of 2024, although performance was slightly trimmed in the first quarter of 2025. The fund’s long book also forms the basis for the long side of the team’s market-neutral strategy. In this strategy, Heydorn looks to pair each long position – benefiting from a powerful structural trend – with a short position in a company likely to be negatively affected by that same trend.

With the businesses in the long portfolio expected to grow faster than GDP, there is also a group of companies projected to grow much slower. “The short leg comes quite naturally,” says Heydorn, noting that “typically, the market-neutral strategy resembles paired investing.” However, he acknowledges that the thematic approach does not always create perfect pair matches. “For example, if you’re long Amazon, how do you find the ideal short to pair with it?” Heydorn asks. “It’s not always a perfect match, but we try to get as close as possible.”

“Typically, the market-neutral strategy resembles paired investing. It’s not always a perfect match, but we try to get as close as possible.”

The Finserve Chelverton Thyra Fund maintains a long portfolio of approximately 30 stocks and 30 to 35 short positions, aiming for a net market exposure of between minus five percent and plus fifteen percent. “We’re not strict, but we try to keep the risk under control,” says Heydorn, adding that the long-term goal is to generate an annualized return of 10 percent with lower volatility than a long-only portfolio. The years from 2019 to 2021 presented challenges for the long/short fund, as its “value-oriented focus.” However, after limiting losses to just 4.5 percent in the tough 2022 environment, the fund rebounded with gains of 17.6 percent in 2023 and 19.6 percent in 2024, before seeing some pullback in early 2025. For Heydorn, managing both a long-only tech-focused fund and its market-neutral counterpart offers investors a broader menu to tailor their portfolios according to their preferences.

This article is part of HedgeNordic’s “Nordic Hedge Fund Industry Report.”