The fund achieved 4.94% for the month of September and 12.11% for the third quarter of 2013 compared to the SWIX benchmark which achieved 5.66% for the month. For the past 6 months, the fund returned 12.37% against a return of 13.96% for the SWIX. Global markets recovered following the failure of "tapering off" of Quantitative Easing to materialise. The Dow Jones rose 1.0%, NASDAQ +9.9%, Nikkei+4.4%, Shanghai +9.0% and the ASX 200 10.8% for the quarter. In commodity markets, energy prices moved higher on the back of an expected improvement in global growth and Middle East geo-political uncertainty. The price of a barrel of Brent crude increased by 6.2% over the quarter with the currency effect of the Rand taking it to 7.7%. In precious metals, silver was the clear outperformer, rising 10.34%, followed by palladium (+9.87), copper (+8.31%), gold (+7.64%) and platinum (+5.77%). The price increase in those metals extracted domestically served at least to support the Rand to some extent against a backdrop of lacklustre trade and fiscal balances. With a disappointing domestic growth backdrop, negative sentiment in the manufacturing and mining sectors, lagging job creation, favourable inflation base effects and input prices, makes the likelihood of policy rate increases unlikely in the near term, despite inflation having moved above the target band. Barring the metals component, food, livestock and textile components of the CRB Commodity Index were negative for the quarter. Domestically, Resources (+c.16.0%) led Industrials (+c.10.0%) and Financials (+c.6.0%) whilst the JSE All share Index returned (+c.10.0%). On balance we saw significant downside risk in emerging markets in general and the South African market specifically, given the high degree of foreign participation in the local market and negative fundamental backdrop. We remain cautious however cognisant of the fact that market can surprise on the upside in what remains a low rate environment.