Investment Officer Luxembourg

Chinese growth is disappointing. Global asset managers are liquidating large parts of their equity positions in the country, resulting in falling share prices. It seems like a godsend for bargain hunters, but passionate China investors are also on their toes.

China is not growing fast enough, so investors have been liquidating their positions in Chinese stocks at an unprecedented rate.

The Luxembourg legislator has done it again: with Bill 8183 (the “Bill”), which entered into force on 28 July 2023 after passing the Luxembourg Parliament, the Luxembourg funds toolbox has been carefully modernised, write Pinsent Masons’ Tom Loonen, Lous Vervuurt and Jan Saalfrank in their latest contribution as Investment Officer knowledge partner.

An inconvenient truth about the financial industry is that it cannot be trusted; there have been too many scandals to remember. Common solutions, such as rules and regulations, no longer seem to be improving trust, necessitating the exploration of new measures.

Trust

A positive correlation exists between economic growth and trust; people who trust each other are more likely to engage in transactions together. The purpose of rules and regulations is to foster trust among economic participants so that they can transact securely.

Superlatives are raining down on India, which seems to have passed China as the promised country for emerging market investors. “It looks like the stars are really all aligned this time.”

High yield bonds are positioning themselves cautiously in the spotlight as recession fears recede and credit quality improves. While junk bonds perform best during periods of robust economic growth, a region that’s closely flirting with a recession is seen as having the most potential.

Ansgar John Brenninkmeijer, the fifth-generation descendant of the Dutch C&A family, read a popular investment book, founded a fund without any prior experience, had it blessed by a daytrading priest, and has been outperforming “virtually all indices” since.

The google search for Ansgar John Brenninkmeijer yields remarkable results. At a young age, he received treatment in a psychiatric institution. He was arrested twice for resisting COVID-19 measures, and he spent a short time in a police cell.

“Shares are no longer dirt cheap, but there are still opportunities. We focus mainly on long-term trends and avoid the riskiest sectors, such as American regional banks and Office REITs,” says Laurence De Munter, investment strategist at Securities De Munter.

At the time of writing, markets are still pricing in just under a 60 per cent chance that the ECB will raise interest rates one more time sometime in the coming months. And although Lagarde has only recently turned to wage growth as an argument for further tightening, there are plenty of reasons to at least pause.

Asset owners are going back to basics en masse. Institutional investors are writing large new mandates for global and developed-market equities, wrote bfinance in a quarterly report published this month. The agency, which advises more than 500 pension funds and other institutional investors worldwide, is also seeing increased interest in investment-grade strategies.

Luca Pesarini, founder and senior portfolio manager of Ethenea Independent Investors, does not mince his words, and so the management of the Ethna-AKTIV fund he helped found in 2002 is no nonsense. For instance, in a recent interview, he shows that he does not have a good word to say about European Central Bank policy and expects a return of inflation. He therefore preaches short-term paper for bonds. For equities, he is not negative but still quite cautious (Ethna-AKTIV fund).