Note that this fund should be measured in terms of its objective and not the general equity peer group or a fixed benchmark index. A key metric that we believe is important is to place more emphasis on is the expected future dividend stream of each company than to manage the capital value of each share. In other words, despite a great company being possibly expensive in the short term we should focus more on the future dividends that it can generate rather than to sell the share and lose out on the expected income. The fund's return in September was once again significantly different to that of the general equity category due to this focus on dividends. The outcome of this philosophy and approach is that the investment performance (total return) is likely to be uncorrelated to the general unit trusts.

Our top shares in the portfolio produced the following returns for September:

British American Tobacco +2.3%, Billiton -1.5%, Sasol -0.2%, MTN +8.1%, Coronation +1.9% and Vodacom +6.6%.

This was the first full reporting month for this fund and it is pleasing that it got off to a solid start. The fund returned 3.18%. It is important to note that this fund should be measured in terms of its objective and not the general equity peer group or a fixed benchmark index.

Our approach to stock picking for this fund has been to place equal weighting on the current dividend yield and the 24 month growth in dividends. The key criterion from an analysis point of view is to focus on the quality of the entities balance sheet and of-course the concept of sustainable growth via the ROE which will then translate into the dividend growth.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the emphasis on portfolio construction has been on diversification. To the end the largest counters are 6% with the minimum at 2.5%.