Amid a pandemic, there should be no sector more defensive than healthcare. Yet as hopes for an economic rebound out of lockdowns have leapt, the publicly listed industry has been a victim of its own success. Over the past 12 months, the MSCI World Healthcare Index has lagged the MSCI World as market favour has shifted towards value stocks, such as financial services and commodities.
For BB Healthcare, the FTSE 250 investment trust, that market logic has translated into a share price total return that has underperformed the MSCI World and FTSE All-Share indices during that same time. Over its first half, which ended in May, the healthcare trust generated a total shareholder return of 8.3 per cent, against 15.2 per cent from the
