Paul Clements, Director
Paul has over 20 years' experience in the industry, starting his career at Barclays Bank Trust Company in 1982 managing unit trust and fixed interest portfolios before moving to Henry Cooke Lumsden where he set up an investment management service. Paul has been with Close Brothers since 1990 where he was initially recruited to set up a fund management arm for a firm of actuaries specialising in self administered schemes.

Andrew Thompson, Fund Manager
Andrew joined Close in December 2000 having spent 12 years with Henry Cooke Lumsden, and is responsible for day to day fund management responsibilities on behalf of private individuals, charities and pension funds with further involvement in fund research.

+7.9%

+7.9%

1.10%

-4.42%

2.60%

1.20%

-3.11%

5.29%

1.71%

-1.09%

6.65%

Portfolio Develompents and Comment

The Fund fell 4.81% over the month and saw inflows of over £109,294 with the Fund now standing at circa £8.2m.

Equity markets once again focused on the ongoing problems in the US, as the fall out from sub-prime dented investor confidence. As a result those markets which bounced strongest in October suffered the most e.g. Emerging Markets -6.1%, Hong Kong -8.6% and UK Mid 250 -8.3% as we saw a flight to quality.

Markets now seem to pricing in slower global growth and expectations of further interest rate cuts in the US continue to grow. Although a number of commentators believe this will fan inflation, they remain confident that the FED is intent on avoiding a recession and will worry about inflation later.

With such volatile conditions we saw a number of funds underperform their benchmark due to their concentrated views, however we remain confident that these funds will bounce back and build on their strong track records.

Towards the beginning of the month we slowly raised cash with the sale of SWIP European Property Fund following the departure of the fund manager, Nigel Bolton, and also continued negative investor sentiment on the sector. We also sold our remaining small holding in the Baillie Gifford Japan fund following a torrid 12 months for Japanese equities, and reduced positions in our US, European and Emerging market holdings.

Having built up our cash positions in the early part of the month we took advantage of the weak markets towards the month end to increase our exposure towards large cap UK equities with a purchase of the FTSE100 Ishare.

Source: Andrew Thompson, Close Private Asset Management Ltd.