Fund Objective

To provide a total return.

View on Past Performance

Global equity markets had a difficult start to the year. Investors' appetite for risk declined amid weakening US economic data, mounting losses related to US sub-prime mortgages and the ongoing credit crunch.The relative performance of value stocks improved in the quarter following the significant sell off towards the end of last year. The fund fell but remained ahead of the MSCI World Index, outperforming in the majority of sectors and in Europe, the Pacific region and emerging markets.

Future Expectations

The outlook for value is typically discussed as a top-down decision, looking at how extreme the valuation spread has become versus non-value stocks. While these approaches have some merit they lack a real world portfolio context.Therefore, we prefer to look at the dividend yield of the fund directly to see whether it represents an attractive entry point. Currently the portfolio yields 4.7% which is cheaper than it has been 90% of the time over the last 20 years. Interestingly, in the middle of 2007 the opposite was the case.We believe that the time to be negative on value has passed and forward-looking investors should look to increase exposure to value stocks at this attractive entry point.

Fund Details