Fund Objective

The Fund aims to achieve capital growth.

View on Past Performance

The FTSE All-Share Index fell sharply in tandem with global markets in September, reflecting continuing concern about the global banking industry and fear of recession.The fund was supported by relatively strong performances from defensive areas, particularly pharmaceuticals and food retailing. We remain overweight in defensive areas, including telecoms, food retailing and pharmaceuticals - sectors that we believe offer the optimum combination of risk, reward and dividend yield. We are underweight in financials, industrials and consumer-related areas, although we have increased our exposure to interest-rate-sensitive areas.There is still a bias towards stock picking, with an emphasis on largecap stocks with overseas earnings - a strategy that has helped performance over the past 12 months. We added to National Express, HSBC and FirstGroup. We sold Land Securities and reduced our exposure to RSA and Standard Chartered.

Future Expectations

We are cautiously positioned, with a bias towards defensive sectors and large-cap stocks. Both should continue to benefit from deteriorating economic fundamentals and falling risk appetite. The economic environment will remain difficult in the UK.

Fund Details