The US portfolio “could have been better” had it had a stronger allocation of technology stock, Ewins added, the sector currently makes up 7.1% of the total investments.
Between April and October, the trust moved to increase its holdings in the US, up 0.6%, but steadily lowered its holdings in the UK, which dropped from 29.3% of the total allocation to 25.5%.
Ewins said the managers actively decided to increase the trust’s exposure to Asia after a long underweight period in the region as a number of countries has made good fiscal progress.
As a result, weighting towards the rest of the world increased from 9% to 12.3% and the allocation to Japan increased 1% in six months.
Looking forward to 2017, Ewins said while it is too early to tell what the impact of the US election results and Brexit will be, he will continue to monitor political developments but added it was also “important in small cap investing to remain focused on the micro-level individual company fundamentals.”
He said: “We also intend to retain a broadly spread investment portfolio that can hopefully deliver a solid return to investors in the coming period.”
