Pension funds, who make up some of the biggest domestic investors in the UK stock market, are being urged by their investment advisers to sell out of equities following last year's "stronger than anticipated" returns - advice that if followed might help create something of a downdraft for the stockmarket.

Hymans Robertson, commonly reckoned to be the fourth-largest of the UK's influential pensions consultancies - behind Mercer, Towers Watson and Aon Hewitt, believes there will be a further "material shift" by UK funds out of equities and into bonds this year.