Global Strategy Fund: October 2021

Summary

• Developed market equities suffered negative performances for September, due to concerns around slower economic growth coupled with talks of the Fed to start tapering quantitative easing in November. This erased some of the past quarters’ gains however, year-to-date developed market equities have still delivered strong results.
• On a year-to date basis, value stocks are outperforming growth stocks as at the end of September despite weaker returns over the past few months.
  • Global equities, as measured by the FTSE All-World Total Return Index returned -4.0% for September, mainly due to the Basic Materials sector which was the biggest detractor to performance.
• It was also a negative month for global bonds, which continue to come under pressure since the start of the year, with government bonds (as measured by the FTSE WorldBIG Index) ending the month -1.9%.
• The Ashburton Global Strategy Fund priced for the month as at the end of September, returned -0.18% (measured between the pricing points 25 August 2021 to 29 September 2021), this is comfortably ahead of the SAA return of -1.42%, measured over the same period.  
• Strong performances from Lyrical and Epoch over the last week of the month contributed to the Ashburton Global Strategy Fund being able to claw back some of the negative returns seen earlier in the month.
• For the month, all three main equity managers outperformed the benchmark, with Mundane being the star performer returning -1.9% for September.
• The bond exposure via the Colchester Global Bond Fund had a negative return for September of -2.4%, underperforming the FTSE WorldBIG Index. 
• The small exposure to China via the Cederberg Greater China Fund had another negative month, returning -3.7% for September.
• The Ashburton Global Strategy Fund reflects the macroeconomic house view of Ashburton Investments and post the implementation of the new Strategic Asset Allocation in January 2021, there have been no changes made from a tactical asset allocation perspective.