Asset Managers

“As corporate profits are rising much faster than expected, high valuations in the equity market are falling fast. Equities therefore remain attractive,” said Natasha Ebtehadj, global equities portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle, in a recent conversation with Fondsnieuws, Investment Officer Luxembourg’s sister publication.

Where growth stocks won the “battle” of value stocks for many years, value stocks recovered well late last year. Although growth stocks have recently regained ground, several fund houses are still expecting a continuation of the rally by value stocks. 

T. Rowe Price, for example, sent out a market outlook last week in which it wrote to stick with value stocks despite the recent gains by growth stocks. According to the fund house, the valuations of growth stocks are too high and value stocks have a chance to get some support.

“The relative performance of emerging markets versus developed markets is in cycles. At the moment we are in a downward cycle. Today almost everyone is negative, but certainly in China there are companies with huge cash flows that are very innovative and offer opportunities for an active manager,” said Gino Delaere (photo), emerging markets specialist and fund manager at Econopolis, from Singapore, where he has been living and working for years.

71 percent of ESG investment funds do not meet the global climate targets set out in the Paris Agreement. Moreover, many explicitly named “climate” funds still appear to invest in fossil fuels. Of the large providers, State Street, UBS and BlackRock in particular achieve poor scores, according to the researchers. 

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating DWS. The stock market watchdog is investigating an accusation that the German asset manager falsely made certain sustainability claims.

Goldman Sachs has struck a tremendous blow with its takeover of NN Investment Partners, the asset management arm of Dutch insurer NN Group, which was announced a few days ago.

“The United States remains the place to be for investors, despite the significant outperformance in recent years. Nowhere are you better served as an equity investor. For emerging markets, caution is especially necessary after the recent debacles in China.

It is better to reduce overweight positions to neutral and wait until the fog lifts. Especially in China,” investment strategist, consultant and author Jan Longeval of Kounselor Consulting BV told Investment Officer in a recent conversation.

As an investor or policy maker, you are constantly busy making decisions: which strategy do I follow, which risks do I want to accept or not, how do I position my portfolio, and so on. Since nobody can predict the future exactly, the circumstances under which decisions are made are always uncertain.

Decision-making therefore requires careful consideration of the pros and cons of each decision. Making such assessments is therefore a core task for policymakers. 

Fund managers consider it less and less likely that the economy will continue to grow in the coming period. Normally, this uncertainty about future growth is a reason for investors to reduce their equity exposure. 

“This can cause downward pressure on equity markets,” Jeroen Blokland, of independent investment research firm True Insight, concluded in his Daily Insight on Wednesday, based on the latest Bank of America’s Global Fund Manager Survey.

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).