Tjibbe Hoekstra

In a remarkable turn of events, actively managed equity funds suddenly saw substantial inflows in May, after months of steady outflows. At the same time, investors left index trackers in droves.

With the SRI Equity Circular Economy Fund, the Belgian asset manager Candriam has launched another impact investment fund. The launch comes exactly one year after the start of its Climate Action Fund.

Skagen Global remains an outlier among global equity funds. The fund shuns most big American technology stocks. ‘The valuations are still unjustifiable for us,’ says manager Knut Gezelius who, despite this underweight to big tech, still managed to beat the market year-to-date.

Due to a sustained period of underperformance, investors are increasingly questioning the validity of factor investing. Georg Elsaesser, Portfolio Manager Quantitative Investment at Invesco, has a simple explanation for the underperformance, and is not worried, yet.

‘The value factor and small-caps in particular have done badly, but that can be explained by the market environment. All factors are still doing what they are supposed to do,’ says Elsaesser.

The performance gap between East Asia and other emerging markets has never been greater than in the first five months of 2020. At first sight, the cause looks obvious: coronavirus. But in the background there is a different dynamic at play.

Ironically, the ranking of best-performing stock markets in 2020 is led by China, the country where the pandemic originated. Korea and Taiwan are also well on their way, and in any case doing much better than most other emerging markets (see graph below).

The coronavirus outbreak has increased the need for more granular ESG data. However, such data are still difficult to collect as they are often not disclosed by companies. This needs to change fast in anticipation of upcoming EU rules, said participants in a webinar on the topic organised by Luxflag on Wednesday.  

The CSSF has suspended David Mapley from his duties as the director of the Luxembourg-domiciled LFP 1 Equity Power Fund. The regulator claims Mapley, a vocal critic of the CSSF, had provided ‘incomplete and incorrect information’ on his application to be the fund’s director.

Companies that opted to retain their staff and take measures to support their suppliers during the coronavirus market crash have been rewarded for this by institutional investors. According to research by State Street Associates.

The difference in valuations between expensive and cheap stocks has overshot in recent weeks. Investors can therefore expect a period of outperformance of value stocks. However, this will not last too long. 

Investors’ asset allocation consensus now seems stronger than it has ever been. Pretty much all investors are overweight in quality and growth stocks, avoiding the sectors most affected by the corona crisis.

As a result of the corona crisis, investors suddenly look at healthcare companies very differently. ‘The pandemic has changed the perception of the sector in the eyes of the outside world,’ says Lydia Haueter, manager of the Pictet Biotech Fund.