Our expert research partners at Morningstar-OBSR have suspended the fund’s ‘Silver’ rating. The Global Commodities and Resource team at Investec is headed by the experienced Bradley George and he will be overseeing the transition.

We will continue to monitor the fund and review it when a permanent successor is in place. For any investors who currently hold this fund, there is no need to take action.

For further information on the funds rating system that Morningstar OBSR uses, please click here.

If you would like to discuss this with your advisor, please feel free to contact us.

To view the guide, please download the following PDF document: FSA’s guide to RDR

For more detail regarding this research, please download the following PDF document: Hedge Fund Research Study

The regulator has revealed that it is getting in touch with 76,732 consumers who it believes have been pinpointed by fraudsters trying to trick them out of their money. Their names appeared on a number of lists recovered from companies that the FSA believes were fraudulently selling investments in land or worthless, sometimes non-existent, shares.

Combined into one list, this is the largest number of target victims that the FSA has ever contacted in one go. The first 10,000 letters arrived yesterday and a further 10,000 letters will be sent each week. The first 5,000 emails will be sent on 30th April, with a further 5,000 each week.

Most of the list contains the names and addresses of the targets. However, as in 19,101 cases only email addresses are listed, the FSA will be sending these people an email warning.

“If you get a letter or email from the FSA over the next five or six weeks, please read it – it could you save you tens of thousands of pounds,” Jonathan Phelan, the FSA’s head of unauthorised business, said. “If you have already been contacted by a firm offering you a ‘once in a lifetime’ investment opportunity or have already invested, then tell us. The information you have could help us catch criminals and shut down their scams.”

To read what Richard has had to say, please download the following PDF document: A View from Moorgate – April 2012

To read Cazenove’s views on the markets in the first quarter of 2012, please open the following PDF document: Cazenove’s Quarterly Market Review

A strong performance from US and Asian stocks has helped push global equity indices to their strongest start to a year since 1998.

Some indices are enjoying their biggest rally since 2009 as investors start to take on more risk.

The FTSE World index has climbed 11% since January 1, which is its best quarterly performance since September 2010 and the best start to the year since 1998, the Financial Times reports.

The US market has been bolstered by strong gains for banks and technology stocks, with the 50% hike in Apple’s shares alone accounting for 14% of the S&P’s 12% rise. Its blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the quarter up 8.2%.

Meanwhile, the MSCI Asia Pacific index has risen 13.5% since the start of the year. Japanese stocks have been the top performers, with the Nikkei 225 up 19.3%, as exporters benefited from the weakening of the yen against the dollar.

The FTSE 100, however, is only up 3.7% this year. In contrast, Greece’s stock market has gained more than 7% after falling over 60% in 2011.

“People realised they were pricing in Armageddon last year, and risk aversion has now been reversed,” Bob Doll, chief equity strategist at BlackRock, told the FT.

Far from being narrowly focused, the thriving Standard Life UK Ethical trust has an investable universe of half the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 and holds stocks in all the major sectors.

Good news for woolly liberals everywhere. Hurrah! An ethical fund is at the top of the UK All Companies performance tables. Well, nearly.

Standard Life’s UK Ethical trust is top quartile over both one and three years, and is touching on top decile for both periods, too. It is run by Andrew Millington and Lesley Duncan, who I feel come to the fund first as investment managers and secondly as ethical enthusiasts – which is probably the right way to approach the business.

Standard Life Investment Management has an interesting approach to outsourcing when it comes to ethical criteria. It surveys its unitholders regularly, to ask what does and does not meet their ethical standards. Two years ago, the answer to the second was airlines, so Standard Life dutifully dumped its airline holdings in line with unitholder wishes.

Oddly enough, having its hands tied in this way hasn’t harmed the fund’s performance. Most of the screening process is done by Standard’s SRI team, and the upshot is that Millington and Duncan (although she’s on maternity leave) have an investable universe of about half the FTSE 100 (by market cap) and a bit more than that in the FTSE 250.

The screening process creates some interesting portfolio construction dynamics. For example, while oil, gas and mining are largely excluded, three out of the fund’s four biggest holdings are – wait for it – oil, gas and mining groups: Xstrata, BG Group and Tullow Oil. As Millington explains, screening is on a stock-by-stock basis. Because most of the big groups, such as Shell, are excluded, he balances his portfolio by ensuring that the ones he can own, he does.

Most professional investors regard ethical funds as having too narrow an investment perspective. Not with this one, though. Millington has about 80 stocks in the portfolio and positions in every major sector.

During 2011 many of the stocks the fund can’t own – such as BAT and Imperial, two tobacco giants, as well as Diageo and GlaxoSmithKline – outperformed the market in a risk-averse year. Yet despite this, Standard Life Ethical still outperformed its peers.

Millington selflessly attributes many of the stock-picks to Standard Life’s small and mid cap team, led by Harry Nimmo, as well as name-checking the guys running large caps.

Evidently, at the heart of this fund are Standard Life’s best ideas from across its UK equities capability.

“I accept that people will regard ethical funds as more cyclical than conventional funds,” says Millington. “But I have the benefit of Harry identifying good-quality growth companies with long-term potential, which are typically more resilient across the cycle.”

Many of his favourites are stocks he reckons will make progress in earnings irrespective of the headwinds facing the British economy. He cites a range of companies: Imagination Technologies, a microchip intellectual property and digital radios business; Ashtead, a technology equipment rental firm; and Booker Group, a food wholesaler.

Ashtead was a new purchase in the second half of 2011. Its shares rose significantly on the back of stronger pricing in its American construction equipment rental business.

Asos, an online fashion group, was a top contributor in 2011, when it was the largest single overweight in the fund. The fund reduced its weighting before the big falls, but Asos is still viewed as a long-term winner.

Today Millington’s most significant overweight is in fixed line telecoms, once such an unloved sector. He was enthusing to me about BT even before the news about the company getting to grips with its pension deficit, which saw its shares turn into Friday’s best performer in the FTSE.

The long-term price deflation and regulatory pressure on BT is beginning to turn, says Millington. “The world is changing in the UK fixed line business. What has been a deflationary market has turned inflationary, and we think that’s sustainable. The regulator is more concerned about making sure BT puts fibre into the ground rather than cutting prices. And meanwhile, consumers are more willing to pay extra for superfast broadband.”

Other sector overweights include support services, industrial engineering and software, although Millington points out that sector positions arise principally out of bottom-up stock ideas. Little about this fund is top-down.

Financials, the third-largest holding, are perplexing for unitholders and Millington alike. The banks are probably the most hated sector, if you ask the general public. Should an ethical fund hold financials? At present there are no British-listed banks that the fund is prohibited from holding.

“It’s a difficult one,” says Millington. “You need a functioning banking system. It is a business that needs to exist, unlike, say, tobacco. So you wouldn’t screen it out as a sector. But if you want to screen out individual banks, the problem is getting precise information about what the bank is doing.”

Millington is cautiously optimistic. “Equities are still attractively valued absolutely and relatively. On a bottom-up basis, we are still positive about the market’s prospects. On a p/e [price/earnings] basis, we are only just into double digits, while at a macro level there are indications that we are in a recovery phase – in the US definitely, if less so in the UK.”

In Britain, balance sheets have been repaired. America is in better shape, and Europe is sorting out its problems. With signs of policy easing in China, the outlook for global economic growth is not that gloomy. “The direction of travel is improving,” says Millington. And, ethical fund manager that he is, let’s assume he’s travelling in an electric car.

He said: “The stock market finished 2011 at 5,572 and having begun the year at 5,899 and the market is only 5,925 this morning so we are up 26 points on the FTSE in one year and three months.

“People have been pessimistic about the markets and rightly so but it doesn’t mean to say that if something happens then it should stay that way.”

Mr Potter said one of his biggest issues is the amount of money that has gone into bonds, saying it is “unfortunate” that pension funds are still selling equities and buying bonds.

“Money has gone into bonds like it is going out of fashion. I am not suggesting that markets are entering a brand new bull market with straight line territory – not at all – there will be lots of bumps ahead.”

He believes those issues that “caused equity markets to do so bad last year” are all mellowing.

Mr Potter said: “And therefore our belief on a view from here is that equities will have to be the asset class of choice, from a value point of view and a dividend point of view and potentially growth potential and total return. We’ve had such a long period of negative or flat returns.”

He points out with the FTSE 100 at 5,925, “it has only just got back to where we started last year”, and that there is a “real possibility” that the market will head to 6,500 this year.

Mr Potter said: “Actually things might not be so bad this year and might be a better year for everyone. So at 5,925, we have 5,572 only just got back to where we were and all of the concerns that caused people to sell equity are reversing. They are not solved but are reversing or mellowing.

“US growth is better than what people thought, US job creation is better, the US housing market is recovering from a very low base and the European economy perhaps won’t fall as much as has been predicted from a few months ago – it may even be flat and avoid recession.

“We’ve got over the Japan earthquake, inflation is coming down, emerging markets are still growing albeit at a slower pace, 85 per cent of the world is still growing and company earnings are growing but at a slow rate of growth. So why wouldn’t markets go back? Why can’t we make some progress?”

The scam may involve you receiving an unsolicited call with an offer to buy your VCT shares at an exaggerated price, with callers claiming to be from New York. If you receive a phone call in this regard, we urge you to ignore it. Octopus, who are aware of the scam, are investigating its origin.

We would ask you to remain vigilant in this regard, and call us if in any doubt, or if you wish to discuss this matter further.