Summary

• Equity markets ended the month with a positive return, as there has been a rise in optimism about the outlook for global growth which resulted from a US stimulus package and more people receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. 
• Global equities as measured by the FTSE World Total Return Index returned 2.8%.
  Global bonds continued to sell-off in March with government bonds (FTSE WorldBIG Index) ending the month with a negative return of -1.9%.
• The Ashburton Global Strategy Fund returned +2.29% for the month of March, this is the NAV on NAV move between the 24 February 2021 and 31 March 2021.
• Within the equity bucket, the deep value exposure via Lyrical, was the best performing underlying fund for the month, returning a healthy 8.3%. The exposure to Mundane and the core equity manager, Epoch, also outperformed the index returning 3.0% and 5.6% respectively.
• The fixed income fund, Colchester Global Bond fund posted a negative return of -2.4% for March.  
• The Aurum exposure returned 0.35% for the month, with the macro strategy performing the best, driven by factor reversal trades from growth to value and notable gains from reflation trades.
• The Ashburton Global Strategy Fund reflects the macroeconomic house view of Ashburton Investments and during the last meeting held in March, there were no changes made from a tactical asset allocation perspective.