Miton UK MicroCap Trust (LON:MINI) has announced that its Factsheet for the month ended 31 August 2024 is now available.
Manager Commentary
August is traditionally considered quiet, because many staff are on holiday and trading within stock markets is often somewhat lower than usual. This year however, even towards the end of July, global economic data had been more mixed than expected. This led to investors being somewhat anxious at the start of August, so when some unexpectedly weak employment data was published in the US, company share prices suddenly became very volatile. Numerous investors feared that the Japanese currency had become too weak, however with many seeking to buy Japanese Yen, the currency has staged a remarkably rapid recovery. Whilst there were all sorts of other gyrations in many other global stock markets at the time, in general most of these abrupt movements have been largely corrected subsequently.
Within the UK stock market, the mainstream and small company indices, such as the FTSE 100 Index, the FTSE Small Cap and FTSE AIM All-Share Index, dropped significantly in early August, and though there was a recovery, the FTSE Small Cap and FTSE AIM All-Share Index were still lower by the end of August.
Although numerous micro-cap companies are standing at what appear to be low valuations, all these global gyrations have meant that they have remained overlooked. The share price of Zoo Digital for example, a global leader in helping the film and TV streaming companies subtitle or dub their content for different countries, fell this month after considerable outperformance over the last three months. We were cheered that Shield Therapeutics share price continued to recover over August, after it announced that sales of its Acrufer iron deficiency pills were up 161% compared to the first half of last year. Even so, the NAV of the Miton UK Microcap Trust fell over the month.
Gervais Williams & Martin Turner
31.08.2024
