Investors enter an era of stock picking

market ANALYSIS

Ashton Bradbury, Theo Zemek, Denis Clough, Angus Tulloch, Tony Nutt and Nigel Thomas were all participants at Investment Week's Six of the Best seminar held in London last week

Framlington's Nigel Thomas characterises the next 10 years as an era when it will be difficult but not impossible to eke out satisfactory equity returns. Thomas said the 1980s and 1990s saw double the long-term real total rate of return of equities, which led to a significant increase in indexation. "We are no longer in that era," he said. In his view it is now very much a stockpicker's market and "all about buying individual firms." Thomas also noted how the UK economy has changed over the past 20 years or so. "We are changing the ways we buy and sell goods and services," he said. "BSkyB...