Three growth funds for this year’s ISA season
The past year has been turbulent for the UK economy. Markets reacted heavily to the outbreak of COVID-19, Britain left the European Union after a considerable transition period and GDP suffered its worst fall on record, contracting by 9.9% in 2020.
With much speculation about how the Chancellor’s Budget announcement on March 3rd could affect the public, it has never been a more challenging time for savers and investors. However, the core investing principles remain the same. It’s easy to respond to short-term noise, especially around ISA season as we review our portfolio’s performance towards the end of the tax year but investors should always look at the long-term investment opportunities.
Below, Adrian Lowcock, head of personal investing at Willis Owen, recommends three funds for investors seeking long-term growth opportunities this ISA season.
ASI Global Smaller Companies
Harry Nimmo uses the ‘Focus on Change’ matrix screening approach, which is adopted across the ASI UK equities team. This matrix ranks the wide universe of over 6,000 companies on growth, momentum, quality and valuation scores with those found in the top quintile forming a basis for idea generation. After further fundamental research, each member of the small-cap team contributes to a ‘best ideas’ list, from which Nimmo builds the portfolio. We believe this fund offers a good way to capture the growth characteristics of smaller companies with the added benefit of global diversification.
Rowe Price US Large Cap Growth
Fund manager Taymour Tamaddon has been part of the team since January 2017 and has a solid background in the US market as a healthcare sector specialist. He has carefully implemented a well-established process that draws on in-house research, taking advantage of the research analysts‘ top ideas. The fund is concentrated with around 60 holdings. Tamaddon takes significant positions in market leaders such as Amazon, but will also include less popular names that meet his exacting criteria. He has a bias towards companies with double-digit earnings potential over three years, but some defensive exposure is added to limit risk during market setbacks.
Fidelity Emerging Markets
Manager Nick Price focuses on companies that offer quality growth and display superior and sustainable returns on assets. To find these companies Price‘s investment process is based on a deep analysis of a company and its accounts. He is looking for strong, unleveraged balance sheets, shareholder-friendly management and reasonable valuations. Price actively manages this as a “best-of-breed“ portfolio, topping up or trimming holdings based on his price targets and technical analysis. The portfolio shows clear biases to growth and a higher return on equity compared with the index.
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Enquiries
Adrian Lowcock, Chris Tuite
Head of personal investing Director & Head of Consumer Finance
Willis Owen MRM London
07849 846387 020 3326 9925
Adrian.lowcock@willisowen.co.uk 07471350180
Notes to Editors
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