Bestinvest says
This is Standard Life's most aggressive UK equity fund. Though still young, manager Ed Leggett already has a strong track record and benefits from the support of the wider UK equity team as well as the considerable resources of the Standard Life group. Investors prepared to weather the fund’s typically high volatility have been amply rewarded.
The fund is officially benchmarked against the equally weighted FTSE 350 index – the manager believes size weighted indices lead to excessive focus on larger companies – but the portfolio is relatively unconstrained and small cap companies may also feature. The investment process is built around Standard Life's Focus on Change philosophy - the belief that with changes in company earnings or investor sentiment driving share prices, identifying such changes ahead of the market is the key to outperformance. Portfolio companies are sourced from a combination of the UK equity team's best ideas, summarised in their Winners List, and the manager's own contacts. Legget meets the management of all portfolio companies. Standard Life's proprietary UK stock Matrix, a quantitative scoring system, assists in identifying potential investment opportunities. The fund is pragmatic in style, which the manager believes gives him the opportunity to perform throughout the cycle.