The UK stock market declined sharply in September with the FTSE All-Share Index ending the month down 13%. Global markets also declined strongly as the crisis in financials continued, first with the US government stepping in to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and then followed by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch and the US government takeover of insurer AIG.The fund continued to perform well this month, beating both its benchmark and the peer group and ranking in the top quartile over the past three months. The fund continued to benefit from its underweight exposure to the materials sector, with strong positive contributions to performance generated by relative underweight positions in mining firms Xstrata, Anglo American and Rio Tinto.There were some significant changes to the fund's sector weightings, including a reduction of the exposure to financials to underweight and an increase in the energy sector to a large overweight.