Fund of the week: a changeable approach pays off

When it comes to stock selection, one word sums up Ian McVeigh’s strategy, says Kevin O’Donnell in Financial Adviser. “Changeability.” That’s because he isn’t tied to one particular style of investing; he has a flexible mandate that allows him to shift from recovery stocks to growth ones or from value to growth stocks, depending on market conditions.

It’s this freedom to alternate between picking growth, value or recovery stocks that has attracted brokers Hargreaves Lansdowne to his Jupiter UK Growth fund. The Oxford history graduate “is a skilled manager”, they say, who has “the ability to reward investors over the long term”.
Described as a “dog” fund by Darius McDermott of Chelsea Financial Services in Fund Strategy before McVeigh took over, it now ranks first in the IMA’s UK All Companies sector over the past year to August, when it returned 31.1%. That’s against 16.2% for the average manager and 15.3% for the FTSE 100 in the same period.

McVeigh aims to achieve long-term capital growth and believes that growth stocks are “fundamentally undervalued” in today’s market. He tells Scotland on Sunday that traditionally you would be expected to pay a premium for “the better profits growth” that these companies are capable of producing.
But “with investors focusing on income stocks, this premium has all but vanished”, creating “significant opportunities for investors”.

Contact: 020-7314 7600

Jupiter UK Growth fund top ten holdings

Name of holding     % of assets

XPLC                       7.00
BP                           6.90
Charter                    5.29
ICAP                        4.75
Royal & Sun Alliance   4.75
Reed Elsevier             3.77
Corus Group              3.23
Old Mutual                2.98
Inmarsat                   2.81
Inchcape                  2.25


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