Global Strategy Fund: July 2022

Summary

• The end of June brought a close to another difficult and volatile quarter and first half of the year. January to June 2022 marks the worst first half of the year for developed market equities in over 50 years. Unchanged sentiments around the Russian-Ukraine conflict, COVID-19 restrictions in China and US monetary policy concerns, together with recessionary fears drove markets into negative territory. All underlying sectors produced negative returns for the month, but the best performer was the Health Care sub-sector returning -3.1%. Global equities, as measured by the FTSE All-World Total Return Index returned -8.4% for June.

• For the past quarter albeit a negative return, value stocks outperformed growth stocks and is also ahead on a year-to-date basis.

• After a positive return last month, global bonds (as measured by The FTSE WorldBIG Index), returned -3.1% for June. 

• The Ashburton Global Strategy Fund priced for the last time in June, returned -2.9% between 25 May 2022 and 29 June 2022.

• With high market volatility that was present throughout the month, the star performance for the month came from the small exposure to China via the Cederberg Greater China Fund that returned a phenomenal +7.72%.

• The alternatives hedge fund of funds manager, Aurum returned +0.8% for June.

• Global property had a negative month, and the AB Global Real Estates Securities Fund returned -8.9%.

• The core equity manager, Epoch and concentrated equity manager, Mundane, produced negative returns although outperformed the benchmark, returning -7.1% and -8.1% respectively.

• The bond exposure via the Colchester Global Bond Fund had a negative return for June of -4.1%. 

• The Ashburton Global Strategy Fund reflects the macroeconomic house view of Ashburton Investments, and subsequently the Tactical Asset Allocation of the fund was changed in May 2022 (no new changes were made in June 2022). The equities exposure was reduced from 67% to 65% and the fund is now neutral to its Strategic Asset Allocation. The Alternatives exposure was increased by 2% to 32%.