Fund Objective

The Fund's objective is to achieve above average capital growth.

View on Past Performance

World markets fell sharply in September. The developed markets outperformed emerging markets and, at a regional level, the best and worst performers were the US and BRIC countries respectively. The fund is overweight the US and underweight emerging markets.The consumer staples and healthcare sectors performed best and the fund is overweight in both. Materials was by far the worst sector and, while the fund is underweight, it does have several holdings.The fund's large cap, defensive bias worked well. However, there was some drag on performance from holdings in materials, such as mining companies, which diluted the success of names such as Wal-Mart.We topped up the defensive exposure by increasing consumer staples. Holdings such as PepsiCo and Coca Cola illustrate our preference for large, defensive names over riskier assets.

Future Expectations

We are maintaining the fund's bias towards large cap growth, with a focus on the IT, healthcare and consumer staples areas. Nevertheless, we are now looking for recovery opportunities amongst cyclical companies. Many have been oversold, but we are mindful of falling into value traps.

Fund Details