The fund aims to provide investors with a balanced spread of investments for long-term capital appreciation by seeking well-managed companies primarily in the UK, where we believe there is superior potential for earnings growth.
November brought good results from the stocks we own and disappointing news from those we don't. And, with share-price movements following suit, the fund had another good month. We therefore approach the end of 2013 with a fund that has outperformed the index by more than 10 percentage points this year. Although this year's winners have been an eclectic bunch, they have generally had lowish valuations combined with upgrades to profit forecasts.Thomas Cook has been our biggest winner, rising by over 300% YTD. The good news from this stock continued in November, with profits coming in 5% better than expected. Analysts have now raised their earnings-per-share forecasts for Thomas Cook next year from 6.5p in January to an estimate of 11p today. More evidence that the future rarely turns out the way we expect - and often in a big way. Our investment process explicitly recognises this.In some ways, our strategy is unexciting: we simply try to make sure that we own shares in companies where earnings forecasts are rising. In November, this meant selling stocks such as Centrica and Royal Dutch Shell and reinvesting the proceeds in the likes of Moneysupermarket.com, Sainsburys and Close Brothers.
