by Rob Hosking
“We were underweight then in technology: now we are slightly overweight,” Everett says. “A lot of investors have got out of technology stocks because they have been burned in that market.”
However, Templeton avoids the well-known names “we don’t own any Microsoft, Dell, or Intel. Samsung is probably the only household name we own in that sector.”
During a recent visit to New Zealand Everett and the company’s Australian based portfolio manager, Peter Wilmshurst, suggested a shift is under way in the US market, although they remain cautious.
“The third quarter saw analysts revise their forecasts upwards for a large number of firms, and we haven’t seen that happen for a very long time - usually they have been revised downwards,” says Wilmshurst.
However the large US current account deficit remains a concern.
Templeton remains most optimistic about Europe, which has been slow to recover but where firms are now reporting rising dividends.
Everett also reminded people of the need to take a long-term view with investments.
Despite the oft-repeated advice to think long term, there is still an extraordinarily large amount of short-term thinking going on, he says.
“The single biggest mistake investors have made in the past few years is to think in a short term time frame,” Everett says.
When Sir John Templeton founded the company in the 1950s he took a 10-year view of investments. Rapid change had led that to be adjusted to 5 years in the mid 1990s but that view was still “very central to what we do”.
Rob Hosking is a Wellington-based freelance writer specialising in political, economic and IT related issues.
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