Asset Allocation

Rabobank said it took advantage of the sharp fall in prices of deeply subordinated bonds of European banks to buy additional cocos. BlueBay Asset Management is also betting on the risky bank bonds after Credit Suisse coco shareholders saw their money go up in smoke.

After a formidable start for the capital markets in 2023, followed by the “SVB correction”, a consensus on the sense and nonsense of the 60/40 formula still remains to be found. Investment Officer takes stock again.

In a turbulent year like 2022, investors needed refuge, which was almost nowhere to find. Investments in oil showed outstanding performance, as one of the few areas in the financial markets. And then there were precious metals. Not all metals performed equally well though, and positive returns were mostly measured in euros.

Dutch pension funds, a major category of investors in global markets and clients to many Luxembourg real estate funds, last year suffered losses on their real estate investments after many years of rising values. Their investments in real estate funds, however,  delivered positive numbers.

While interest rates in the bond market are rising uninhibitedly, the stock market may be in a dead-cat bounce, or a “sucker-rally”. Some market specialists do not trust the rally and declare equities “a lost cause”. In terms of allocations, the traditional appeal of a 60-40 portfolio appears to make a comeback now that the ‘earnings yield spread’ between stocks and bonds is narrowing.

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.

Although professional investors - on average - are still considerably underweight equities, there is one category they are massively allocating to. Never before has the allocation jump in emerging markets equities been so large in three months. EM is hot.

Index products have seen significant inflows at the expense of active products, reflecting increasing interest from both institutional and retail investors. The outlook for Europe remains positive in the coming years. Bond ETFs in particular still have strong growth ahead of them.

Last year was a tough one for financial markets, and the ETF segment was not left behind as assets under management - at the global level - fell for the first time since 2011. 

For this week’s Morningstar Top 5, we look at the best-performing funds investing in emerging market local currency bonds. These funds ended 2022 with a loss of 9.9 per cent, measured in dollars, or 4 per cent in euros. The outlook for this risky asset class does not seem favourable at first glance, although some fund managers say there are opportunities.

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.