Rathbones' Jackson reassesses 'vulnerable' defensive holdings in light of Covid-19

Leisure stocks dumped

Covid-19 has forced Alexandra Jackson to "rethink" her definition of defensive stocks.

The manager of the £41.4m Rathbone UK Opportunities fund said while she had no "great new definition" yet, healthcare and telco stocks still had defensive qualities, while technology companies are becoming "more utility-like". "We have had to rethink a little bit our definition of defensive in the past year. If you cannot go into the gym or into a bar, it is just not that defensive. "We went through an exercise in July/August of looking through the fund and trying to work out which companies were vulnerable to rolling lockdowns because we thought we could see that coming, from the exp...