Fund Review
The Fund produced a return of -4.5% over the past quarter ended 31 March 2018, outperforming its benchmark by 0.3%. Following on from a strong 2017 the dollar based fund out-performed its benchmark by almost 0.5% and is still ahead over three years, four years, five years and since inception.

Share selection again drove returns, led by picks in Consumer Staples, Financials and Information Technology. Information Technology, now the highest weighted sector in the fund at 25.6% (up from 21%) and overweight the benchmark’s 18.9% had the best return in the quarter of +4.4%. Consumer discretionary sector returned +1.2% in the quarter.

The US shares were the main contributor to the fund’s return in the quarter contributing +1.3% to the funds overall performance. The fund is now 65% invested in the US, still very overweight the 55% of the benchmark.

The portfolio outperformed the benchmark in almost all regions. The top five shares are Alphabet (4.6% of fund), Alibaba (3.4%), Amazon (3.1%), JP Morgan Chase (2.8%), and Microsoft (2.5%) which was added to the portfolio in the quarter. Technologyrelated shares contribute almost 11% of the top ten shares.

Looking Ahead
Fund manager Columbia Threadneedle believes that their approach of focusing on quality growth shares will continue to be rewarded, even though sharp rallies by cyclical shares may cause short-term underperformance. They believe that companies with superior fundamentals will prosper