Oil prices are up by around a quarter since late June and reached 10-month highs this week, as Saudi Arabia and Russia squeeze supply to counteract falling demand. Rising prices are a boost for giants BP and Shell, who together make up around 13pc of the FTSE 100’s value.
Meanwhile, interest rates have risen at the fastest pace since the 1980s in a boost to banks’ profit margins. Financial stocks account for almost a fifth of the FTSE 100 by value.
Companies in growth sectors such as tech are often highly leveraged and so more sensitive to rising interest rates. This means that markets with a higher amount of tech businesses, such as the US, are a riskier bet.
Mr Hjort said: “We think this kind of environment is quite favourable to value investing in general as opposed to growth. The UK is a pretty good example of that.”
Another factor in Britain’s favour is that “valuations are just cheaper”, he said. JP Morgan earlier this summer said that British-listed companies were the cheapest in the world because of “very gloomy” sentiment towards the UK.
Finally, the UK economy was faring better than the eurozone. Economists at BNP Paribas expect Britain to fall into a mild recession in the first half of next year, but said that the economy had proved far more resilient than expected.
Meanwhile, the eurozone is facing the prospect of a double dip recession after quarterly growth figures were revised lower last week.
Paul Hollingsworth, chief European economist, said there had been “a lot of pessimism” about the UK, especially after Liz Truss’s premiership.
He said: “There was a lot of caution about UK assets. Things have moved on since then. As we saw, the economy did perform a lot better than people expected.
“When we speak to people they agree that there is some weakness ahead but it’s not going to be a severe downturn, partly because some of that underlying resilience is there.”
BNP Paribas is one of the biggest banks in Europe, with assets of more than €2.5 trillion.
