Skandia Global Best backs Europe over US

Skandia's Global Best Ideas fund has increased its exposure to Europe and the emerging markets at the expense of the US.

The fund's annual asset allocation review has resulted in a reduction in US weighting from 16% to 15%, with Europe (ex UK) up 0.5% to 14.5% and emerging markets up 0.4% to 9.4%.

In addition, Japanese exposure is up 0.2% to 4.7% and Asia (ex Japan) has dipped 0.1% to 6.4%.

As the fund is primarily designed for UK based investors, a 50% weighting is biased to the local market - while the overseas element is based on global GDP as identified by the MSCI AC World GDP index.

Global Best Ideas contains the ten best stock ideas from ten top fund managers - including mandates from Schroders' Richard Buxton, Artemis' Mark Tyndall and Odey founder Crispin Odey.

The average cash weighting of the fund has been 5% and no one stock has ever been more than 5% of the fund. Skandia says there are low levels of overlap in the fund, with only 10 stocks held by more than one manager, two of which are held in three mandates.