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Moore urges market caution
Richard Moore, manager of the Santander UK Growth Fund, remains cautious about the markets. Says Moore: "I started the year with a relatively cautious view due to the continued risk of recession in the US. Although a state of recession has not been confirmed for certain, it is now not so much a question of whether the US market will experience a downturn but how long this downturn will last and how deep it will be.
"Whilst the UK economy appears to be more resilient, the credit crunch and deteriorating outlook for consumer expenditure will continue to undermine the market in the short term."
Moore says increasing inflationary pressures will squeeze consumer expenditure and increase company input costs. However, the sell-off in the market has left many cyclical stocks on attractive valuations that may be over-discounting the potential impact the slowdown will have on profitability. So, while the current fund view is to continue in a cautious vein in the short term, Moore will be taking advantage of these attractive valuations as they occur.
One recent change he has made is to buy back into the banking sector, where the fund is now slightly overweight. Valuations were relatively low ahead of the reporting season and there been a rally since then, with banks further helped by the liquidity injection by global central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve. This has given them more flexibility over their lending in the short term. Longer term, there are still issues for the banks, in terms of slower lending growth and rising bad debts.
Moore has also increased his exposure to the insurance sector, where there are some attractive valuations and less growth issues than exist within banking stocks. In addition, he is keen on the stocks that can take advantage of market volatility, such as MAN Group and Intermediate Capital, for example.
The fund is still overweight the oil sector, although Moore has moved away from integrated oil companies - selling some exposure to Shell - and into exploration and production companies, which are more leveraged into the higher oil prices. In particular, Cairn Energy, which is producing from oil fields in India, and Premier Oil, which has a good growth profile, have come in for attention.
"I firmly believe that food price inflation is here to stay. There are relatively few ways of playing this in the UK - the main one is through food retailers that will benefit from higher prices and I have further increased exposure to William Morrison Supermarkets.
"I believe that market valuations are beginning to discount the worst of the downturn and the expected cuts in interest rates over the coming months will start to flow through to the economy by the end of 08 and I remain positive about the opportunities to buy undervalued stocks throughout the year."
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