Fund Objective

To aim to provide capital growth.

View on Past Performance

Global equity markets performed very poorly in September, succumbing to ongoing weakening economic performance in the US and Europe. Even more significant was the failure of investment bank Lehman Brothers and the arranged takeover of troubled banks, Washington Mutual and Wachovia.The culmination of the sell-off in equities was the failure of the US bank rescue plan to gain approval in the US House of Representatives on 29 September. Despite companies' generally excellent balance sheet strength, fears of significant further weakening in consumer and corporate spending on a global basis hurt the technology sector badly.

Future Expectations

The prospects for global economic growth remain poor and spending on technology products by both consumers and companies is, therefore, likely to weaken further in our view. We believe that current consensus earnings expectations for 2009 remain too high for most technology companies. We, therefore, remain cautious despite the likelihood of a sharp rally in equities if the House of Representatives passes a revised rescue plan at the second attempt.

Fund Details