Commodities underweight drives Brazier fund forward

Schroders UK Equity manager's conviction over commodities positioning has paid off as fund outperforms in comparison with rest of peer group

Schroders' UK Equity fund has outperformed over the past year despite its underweight position in mining. Manager Simon Brazier said he has held low exposure to the sector as he believes, and continues to believe, better opportunities exist elsewhere in the UK market. "This is not a one-way fund bet on any particular sector or style, but recently the underweight commodities position has helped me. "However, when this sector was strong at the beginning of the year I still managed to outperform." The fund has posted a loss of 4.2% bid to bid over the past 12 months to 1 September but ...