The fund management company Jupiter Fund Management (JUP) said today that recent performance was better than expected and the shares have soared 9% to 96.2p. Jupiter revealed that the net outflow figure for the quarter was £600 million, better than the expected £800 million. (In other words, withdrawals from Jupiter funds were £600 million greater than payments in.) Jupiter also said there had been a significant new mandate from a large sovereign wealth fund.

The good news doesn’t stop there: new CEO Matthew Beasley is shaking things up with plans to close, merge or reposition a quarter of Jupiter’s current funds. Most of these funds are small, with less than £100 million under management. This move should reduce costs.

So it looks like management is doing the right things but the long-term outlook for Jupiter still isn’t great. Jupiter is an active fund manager – in other words, all of its funds are run by expensive City fund managers who pick stocks for their fund or funds. The long-term trend is away from active funds to passive funds where the fund picks all the stocks in a particular index like the FTSE 100. That’s a big problem for Jupiter which isn’t going away.

Thursday's biggest UK stock market risers and fallers