The principal detractor at the stock level was ICAP, the world's biggest money broker. Some performance was also lost through the fund's resources exposure. Another negative was the fund's overweight in basic materials. The biggest positive contributor to performance was the fund's zero exposure to HBOS.There was an additional benefit from not holding hedge fund business Man Group, which fell 40%, and by avoiding miners BHP Billiton, Lonmin and Kazakhmys. Further value was added from positions in relatively defensive stocks such as SSL, HSBC and AstraZeneca.During September, we reduced the fund's resources exposure further, as a slowing global economy is likely to impact demand for all commodities. In a similar vein, we reduced the industrials weighting by selling out of Cookson.We purchased a new holding in telecoms company Cable & Wireless as there are several imminent catalysts coming to drive a rerating of the shares - including the completion of the Thus takeover and a likely demerger of the firm's international operations. We took profits in Autonomy as it reached our price target following a tremendous run which propelled the stock into the FTSE 100 Index.
1.49p
