Ronald van Genderen

The Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation marks its second anniversary next month. Although it was quickly adopted as a sustainability label, its actual purpose was to provide a framework for communicating the extent to which sustainability plays a role within an investment fund. Adjusted rules that took effect in January 2023 caused a stir in the sustainable fund landscape.

Last year was another disappointing year for emerging market investors. The MSCI EM index yielded more than the MSCI World index, although the underperformance was less dramatic than in 2021. A summary of key events and a ranking of the five best-performing funds.

Europe’s economy is heading for recession. The war in Ukraine, an energy crisis, rising inflation and rising interest rates are increasingly starting to hamper economic growth. With cyclical sectors in particular are expected to be affected, as they are the most sensitive to the state of the economy. However, the impact of an economic slowdown can be different for each sector. In any case, the price performance of the various sectors this year shows no in any case, no unambiguous picture and there is also a large dispersion in returns.

This week’s Top 5 by Morningstar looks at the performance of funds that invest in Chinese A-shares in the year to date. A-shares are shares of mainland China-based companies that trade on the two Chinese stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Since 2003, select foreign institutions have been able to purchase these shares through the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor programme. 

Style risk is one of the key risks that sustainable investors need to be aware of. After all, many equity funds with a sustainable mandate tend to lean towards a growth style. Any choice of style brings the likelihood of it falling out of favour with investors over a period of time. So too this year’s growth style.

For emerging markets, the third quarter of this year was almost the exact mirror image of the second quarter. The MSCI EM index recorded an underperformance compared to the MSCI World index, mainly due to a solid loss for Chinese equities. In Latin America, some markets actually made up for second-quarter losses in the past three months. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continues to weigh on Eastern European markets.

The idea that sustainable funds will be more expensive than conventional funds due to the extra cost of sustainability research is not necessarily true. Both active and passive funds turn out to be cheaper. Sustainable funds are classified under European regulations into Article 8 and Article 9 funds. Within the latter category, we rank the cheapest options within global large-cap equity funds.

Eurozone value stocks are performing this year in a way not seen since 2016. Over the first eight months of the year, they actually achieved better returns than the broad market. Yet investors in funds that invest in such equities will have few reasons to celebrate.

Eurozone small-cap equity funds cannot exactly count on warm interest from investors. The assets under management are considerably lower than for funds within the European small-cap category, for example. Moreover, investors have been withdrawing money from the funds on balance for years. This year, this waning interest will not change given the mediocre performance over the first seven months.

After underperforming in the first quarter, the emerging markets index outperformed the MSCI World in the second quarter. This was entirely due to China, which ended the second quarter positively, while almost all other equity markets suffered significant losses.