If you don't have a team of analysts backing you with top notch information, then you shouldn't try to play the markets in these times of turmoil, a top US portfolio manager said yesterday.

For investors, information is king and those without ready access to information while the stock markets respond to crises in Russia and Asia, the investor has to make sector plays.

That's difficult to do even with the best of information, portfolio manager Steven Abernathy said.

"I think you should be in cash,'' Mr. Abernathy said in response to a question about what the ordinary investor should do in the current market situation. "Anybody without information should go out and buy a cash-enhanced product.'' Such money market investments include US treasury bills that will return between 4.5 to six percent.

Of course you can also go out and buy into a portfolio you trust. Access to information is the key to The Abernathy Group's success over the past seven years. Mr. Abernathy is portfolio manager for the group's four health care and information technology funds.

The firm's Long Term Capital Partners Fund has had a track record of about 50 percent growth in the seven years to December 31, 1997. The firm was picked as the number one manager for growth equity by the Nelsons Directory in 1997, number one for all equity styles by MAR Hedge in 1997, and number one by Money Manager Review in the same year.

The key to this success is the decision by the group to establish a proprietary group of about 100 experts in information technology and health care. These are such people as doctors and information technology users who have also put in an average of $1 million into the fund.

"They have a vested interest,'' Mr. Abernathy told a group of investors yesterday at a luncheon hosted by the Emerald Financial Group. "Information is one of the most important risk reducers. Wall Street would have it as diversification. Diversification is important. But information is so important that it can lower your risk to zero and put you in jail.'' He was referring to the most extreme case of trading on inside information, which is illegal in well-policed markets.

The group picked the health care and technology sectors for the long term growth performance. Technology has had a 35 percent compound return in the ten years from 1987. Health care has had a return of 17 percent during the same period.

He doesn't believe the funds or the sectors they follow will be able to sustain the kind of growth they've enjoyed in the past, but they'll come close.

Mr. Abernathy was in Bermuda to help promote the launch of Emerald's health care and technology fund. The Emerald Health Care and Technology Fund will invest in The Abernathy Group funds.

While you need a minimum of $750,000 to invest in the Abernathy fund, the Emerald fund requires a $25,000 minimum investment has a management fee of 2.2 percent, and a performance fee of 20 percent.

The fund is the first in a series of funds the company plans on launching, Emerald president David Bolden said yesterday. The Emerald Global Financial Services Fund will be launched on September 23. UK-based Eldon Capital will be the advisor to the new fund.