Summary

• Equity markets ended the month with positive returns, driven by a drop in COVID-19 infections and a rapid roll-out of vaccines. Value stocks continued to outperform growth stocks with a return of 4.8% for value stocks vs. 0.4% for growth stocks in February.

   

• Global equities as measured by the FTSE World Total Return Index returned 2.4%, despite giving up some returns towards the month-end.

   

• Government bonds (FTSE WorldBIG Index) had a negative return of -1.9% for February.

   

• The Ashburton Global Strategy Fund had a positive return of 2.4% (this is the NAV on NAV move between 29 January 2021 and the 24 February 2021). The performance takes the market drop of the last 2 days in January 2021 into account.

   

• The deep value exposure via Lyrical was the best performing underlying fund for the month, returning a healthy 9.9%. Within the equity bucket the exposure to Mundane and the core equity manager, Epoch, also outperformed the index returning 4.5% and 2.7% respectively.

   

• The fixed income fund, Colchester Global Bond fund posted a negative return of -2.4%.

   

• The Ashburton Global Strategy Fund reflects the macroeconomic house view of Ashburton Investments and during the last meeting held in February, there were no changes made from a tactical asset allocation perspective.