Fund Objective

The objective of the Fund is to provide long-term capital growth with a reasonable and growing level of income.

View on Past Performance

The FTSE All-Share Index fell by 13% in September, reflecting the crisis in the banking industry.The fund performed relatively well, supported by an overweight position in defensive areas, particularly pharmaceuticals and food retailing. Indeed, we are overweight in the most defensive sectors of the market, including telecoms, pharmaceuticals and food retailing - sectors that we believe offer the optimum combination of risk, reward and dividend yield.We have underweight positions in financials, industrials and consumer-related areas, but we have increased our exposure to these interest rate sensitive areas. We have reduced our exposure to the mining and oil sectors.We continue to focus on stock picking, with an emphasis on large-cap stocks with overseas earnings - a strategy that has supported performance over the past 12 months. We added to our holdings in National Express, HSBC and FirstGroup. We sold Land Securities and reduced RSA and Standard Chartered.

Future Expectations

We have a bias towards defensive sectors and large-cap stocks. Both should continue to benefit from deteriorating economic fundamentals and a reduction in risk appetite. The economic environment in the UK will remain challenging.

Fund Details