UK stocks might have avoided the landslide experienced by US and European peers last year but its relative underperformance this year comes much to the dissatisfaction of Nick Train.

The net asset value of the fund manager’s Finsbury Growth & Income (FGT ) trust rose 5.2% in the first five months of this year, outpacing a 2.5% increase in the FTSE All-Share index. That, however, pales into insignificance relative to much bigger jumps by European bourses and US technology stocks.

Interviewed at the recent Frostrow investment companies conference, Train said: ‘Beating a dismally underperforming stock market is not good enough. I need to be able to generate returns that are competitive for people’s savings.’

He continues to believe that investing in the UK market can achieve this objective but ‘My god, we’re being asked to demonstrate that right now’.

‘I always want to take an optimistic view. I’ve got to believe that it’s an opportunity because that’s what I’m invested in,’ he said.

The UK market’s unloved status ‘ignores the fact that there are some truly globally substantive, successful companies that are listed on the London Stock Exchange that have every chance as doing as well as the hottest Nasdaq stock or your favourite European luxury goods company’.

Part of the problem is down to ‘genuinely bad luck’ – ‘that the UK’s undoubted technology and academic expertise just didn’t produce the Google.’

But while some people might refer to the UK as a ‘dustbin’ or a ‘museum’, he retains conviction in the fund’s small collection of big global brands.

‘I know what they’re getting at but sometimes you don’t have to invest in novelty – that’s risky by the way – to capture big global themes,’ he said.