Glenn Freeman: In this edition of "Ask The Expert". I'm speaking to Bryce Anderson from Morningstar Investment Management.

Bryce, thanks for your time today.

Bryce Anderson: No problem.

Freeman: Now we are talking today about some of the opportunities that you guys are taking advantage of given the market sell-off within the U.S. in particular.

Anderson: Sure that's been a pretty wild ride in U.S. equities toward the end of the year and I think between trade wars, select earnings downgrades in some key companies as well as concerns over growth. That’s spooked investors and you saw a pretty significant sell-off. I think whilst volatility is uncomfortable as valuation driven investors, it's when opportunities appear.

Freeman: I think that’s certainly interesting – it's a good point for investors to keep in mind when they are reading all the negative press and but this is actually like you are saying that when the opportunities are out there for the professional investors like yourselves.

Anderson: I guess to that end what opportunities have their reason. For sometime we felt that in aggregate U.S. equities is quite expensive and I guess we still feel that way, but I think there are some select opportunities in the sell-off that we find are now a good entry point and one of those is consumer staples.

Freeman: What is it about that sector that makes it appealing now, I think you were saying earlier that it's valuation driven.

Anderson: So it really is about value and price. It's about the price you pay. So, this is a sector which has had some challenges. It has some concerns over changing consumer's trends and the like but it's all about price and as the prices have come off it really provides an opportunity to access high quality companies at reasonable valuations.

Freeman: And also, Bryce so what sort of a role does this play within people's portfolios and how much should they be focusing on safe consumer staples for instance.

Anderson: Sure. So for us and talking about our portfolio is it has something quite different to what we have in the portfolios at the moment. So it provides a really good balance to our cyclical exposures that consumer staples has, reasonably defensive earnings profile to go with its reasonable valuation.

Freeman: Does this impact your holdings within that consumer cyclical area.

Anderson: I think again it's about looking at that part of the market through a valuation lens and I think inside U.S. equities I think we find that part of the market still to be reasonably expensive and a staples element is really where the value is.

Freeman: Taking a broader view for a moment what are some of the other areas that you are looking at. Other areas of the portfolio.

Anderson: Sure. So I think a take home message is that despite the falls in equity markets we still think broadly markets are expensive. And so in that environment we hold elevated levels of cash. But you can still find select opportunities if you are willing to I guess be different. So with that we have positions in emerging markets, Japan, the U.K. and then if we look at sort of a sector view we have some select positions in financials, energy and telcos.