Emerging value in industrial/cyclical names - but what is the risk?

Lack of individual company growth

The headwinds facing the market come courtesy of an ever-more difficult external macro-environment, but also from the lack of growth coming at the individual company level, writes Franklin Templeton's Colin Morton.

Unless you have been undertaking a solo, unaided trek to the South Pole (take a bow Luke Robertson - equity trader from our Edinburgh office), it has been impossible to hide from the volatile beginning to the year for UK equities. Last year, the FTSE All Share index was ranked towards the bottom of the third quartile of the IA UK All Companies sector, suggestive of a somewhat consensus trade among active managers: underweight positions in anything with exposure to energy, and overweight positions in stocks with the perceived safety of stable cashflow generation. The result was the 'bi...