Max Severijns

At the moment, the healthcare sector is still underdeveloped digitally, while the world population is getting older and more chronically ill. Nevertheless, this sector is also slowly but surely embracing the Internet of Things. Henk Grootveld sees this as a reason to invest in digital healthcare.

Accommodative central bank policy, an ageing Europe and the exorbitant increase in debts make interest rate hikes in Europe extremely unlikely in the short term. This increases the risk of negatively-yielding bond portfolios for pension funds and insurers. Fondsnieuws, Investment Officer Luxembourg’s Dutch-language sister publication, asked three investment specialists for their views.

In 2017, Joof Verhees, senior client advisor and former board member at Van Lanschot Kempen, was asked if he wanted to become team manager of the Dutch national field hockey team. Up to and including the Tokyo Olympics, Verhees was responsible for the ins and outs of the national field hockey team as the right-hand man of national coach Max Caldas.

In 2008, the ECB changed its approach to a “full allotment” system. “Those apparently meaningless words explain why the savings interest rate is currently zero percent. It is also a benchmark to watch for when the savings interest will rise again.

To increase the range of responsible and sustainable solutions available to investors, Invesco launched the Solar Energy UCITS ETF this month. But surprisingly, even this ETF is only “light green”, under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).

In April this year, Auréus launched the Equities Blue Chips fund. The fund is in Morningstar’s highest rated percentile for sustainable funds. “That is amazing. The fund is not labelled as sustainable, and just this one is in the top percentile,” said Auréus’s Chief Commercial Officer Han Dieperink in an interview with Fondsnieuws, Investment Officer Luxembourg’s sister publication (for whom Dieperink writes regular commentary articles).

Emerging companies in the technology sector are often heavily overestimated, according to tech investor Richard Clode of Janus Henderson. “The trick is to remain cynical,” he said. Remarkably, he said he also sees opportunities in emerging market companies that have yet to go public. 

The bond market is in the doldrums. The value of the world’s negative yielding debt has risen to more than USD 16,000 billion, the highest level in six months. Yet not every bond investor is worried about negative yields.

“If you want to identify long-term trends, you would do well to select mainly companies that are best positioned within that trend. In general, these are the more expensive listed companies in the stock market.”

 This is the view of portfolio manager Jack Neele in a conversation with our sister publication Fondsnieuws. Robeco’s Global Consumer Trend Fund operates as much as possible independently of underlying macroeconomic factors such as interest rates and inflation. His approach is bottom-up when it comes to stock selection. 

All indications are that 2021 will be an unprecedented record year for equity ETFs. In the first six months alone, inflows reached USD 519 billion. This means that all previous records have already been broken. Decades of growth for passive products await’.