Healthcare reform brings stockpicking opportunity

NORTH AMERICA

Despite a successful 2009, we have recently changed the positioning within our portfolios to become more defensive in relative terms.

In a standard period, we would expect to have over- and underweights of +/-5% at sector level but right now, the biggest overweight is 2.5%. This is because we believe the biggest divergence, in price relative to fair value, is not across sectors but within them. There has been dramatic change in healthcare within the US. We currently hold an overweight position overall but that is very bottom-up in perspective. Within the consumer space, we have moved away from ‘discretionary’ to ‘staples’, now having a neutral weight overall, while we believe there are ‘cap and trade’ stockpicking o...