According to Jodie Gunzberg, Global Head of Commodities and Real Assets at S&P Dow Jones Indices, March saw the biggest comeback in commodities.
St. Patrick’s Day didn’t just have a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but had basically the whole commodity basket. The S&P GSCI that represents the world’s most significant commodities, ended March 17th with a positive total return year-to-date for the first time in 2016, up 1.9%.
The index reached its highest level since December 10th, 2015, and gained 18.8% since its bottom on January 20th, 2016. This is the most the index has ever increased in just 40 days after bottoms.
Further, now in March, 23 of 24 commodities are positive. This is the most ever in a month with one exception when all 24 commodities were positive in December 2010. It is also the fastest so many monthly returns of commodities changed from negative to positive, making a comeback from November 2015 when just two commodities were positive.
Now, only aluminum is negative in March, down 3.1%. However, its roll yield recently turned positive that shows more scarcity (that is very rare for aluminum,) indicating it may turn with the rest of the metals. Especially if the U.S. dollar weakens, the industrial metals tend to benefit most of all commodities. That says a lot about their economic sensitivity given all commodities rise with a weak dollar.
According to Axa IM‘s credit market monthly review, the strong rebound in credit since mid-Feb has legs to run further. Greg Venizelos from the Axa Research & Investment Strategy team writes that the improvement in US macroeconomic data and the stabilisation in both the oil/commodity markets and the Chinese risk premia, have brought some respite to global risk. “Credit spreads saw a material tightening as a result, from levels that were arguably overdone in the context of global growth and credit fundamentals. Since 11 February, US High Yield (HY) has transformed itself from the worst performing market within developed market credit to the best performing, matching our early February call for HY to outperform investment grade (IG). Looking ahead, while it’s reasonable to expect a consolidation in the broader risk rally after a very strong run, we think that credit spreads can continue to tighten and HY spreads can compress further vs IG in the near term.
The rebound in US HY has been nothing short of spectacular, with the overall index returning 7.2% since 11 February, led by an increase of c.20% in energy and c.16% in metals and reaching 1.3% YTD
Venizelos notes that “the rebound in energy is, of course, from a very distressed level.” Indicative of the brutal correction earlier in the year, energy remains the worst among the biggest HY sectors year-to-date, down by 2.9%.
The outperformance of HY over IG that we advocated in early February has materialised and we see scope for this HY/IG spread compression dynamic to run further. While IG spreads have clearly widened YTD, HY spreads have remained relatively contained.
As a result, the US HY/IG spread ratio has compressed from 4.2x in mid-December 2015 to 3.6x currently.”We think that there is room for further compression in spreads, pushing the spread ratios towards the ‘low 3s’ in US and below 3.5x in euro. One technical hindrance to further spread compression for US HY, in particular, is that the US HY index spread has tightened markedly vs x-asset volatility, from 100bps (+3.7) in late January to -38bps (-1.5) currently, implying that the compression momentum could be due a pause for breath.”
From a seasonality perspective, Venizelos noted that, on average, March tends to be a month of positive returns for HY credit and flat-to- negative returns for IG credit. HY credit has already met and exceeded this seasonal pattern, with US HY at 2.8% month to date, which is above its March ‘average plus one standard deviation.’ “This suggests that the current run rate of HY performance is unlikely to be sustained over the entire month. Indeed, while the tail risks that have dogged global risk until early February have receded, credit investors may begin to fret about more mundane risks, like excessive supply in primary markets and insufficient new issue premiums, which could hinder credit spread performance,” he concludes.
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrPhoto: Rede Brasil Actual. For Brazil, No Glimmers of Light Yet
With so many headlines recently over politics and economics in Brazil, Eaton Vance wants to provide an update on recent events and the market volatility that has followed.
Over the past two years, Brazil’s economy has suffered from a terms-of-trade shock as well as simultaneous fiscal and political crises. These shocks have led to seven straight quarters of economic contraction (the longest recession since at least the Great Depression era of the 1930s) and multiple credit rating downgrades, leaving Brazil’s sovereign credit rating back in “junk” territory by all of the major ratings agencies.
With the exception of large currency depreciation, says Matt Hildebrandt, Global Credit Strategist at Eaton Vance, Brazil’s progress adjusting to these shocks has been limited. Fiscal deficits have grown larger and public debt levels higher with no sign of debt sustainability in sight. To make matters worse, President Dilma is currently defending herself in congressional impeachment hearings while former President Lula and the heads of both of the lower and upper houses of Congress have been implicated for corruption from testimony received from the ongoing Operation Carwash investigations.
According to the expert, Brazilian assets have rallied the last few weeks, as the market has interpreted negative news related to President Dilma as positive for the country. The thinking is as follows: Dilma’s removal may ease the political gridlock currently paralyzing the policy process, which would allow the government to develop and implement a plan that puts the country’s debt trajectory on a sustainable path and that improves the economy’s competitiveness. Such thinking may prove correct in the long run, but impeachment will likely be a messy process and even if Dilma is removed, the political establishment will still be plagued by unscrupulous personalities, vested interests and party factions. The path to debt sustainability and greater economic competiveness will be a long one.
From a long-run perspective, Eaton Vance thinks Brazilian assets offer a lot of attractive opportunities. But, the recent market rally has priced in the best possible near-term outcome even though the outlook is fluid and uncertain.
“Expect more market volatility in Brazil in the months to come until the government, regardless of who is running it, is able to articulate and implement a more coherent policy path forward. Only at that point will we be able to say that there is some light emerging at the end of the tunnel”, concludes Hildebrandt.
Foto: Jonathan Mueller
. UBS Wealth Management Americas y UBS AM lanzan un servicio de externalización de CIO
UBS Wealth Management Americas and UBS Asset Management announced the launch of UBS Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO), a new service to address the needs of institutional clients and those who serve on investment committees at institutions such as religious organizations, pension funds, foundations, endowments, alumni associations and charities. This program combines UBS’s consulting experience and investment heritage, providing clients the ability to retain portfolio oversight while delegating investing decisions to experienced managers.
“Outsourcing investment decisions to aknowledgeable and dedicated discretionary consultant, rather than relying on those within the organization who have differing responsibilities, can better help organizations accomplish their missions,” said Peter Prunty, head of UBS Institutional Consulting. “UBS OCIO has the institutional skills and asset management expertise to work on behalf of clients to help them achieve their investment goals, giving clients more time to focus on their organization’s objectives.”
“In partnering with our colleagues in Wealth Management Americas to deliver a compelling OCIO offering, we are focused on enabling clients to concentrate on what matters to them and their organization,” said Frank van Etten, Head of Client Solutions for UBS Asset Management. “We have complemented the institutional offering of a global asset management organization with the accessibility of a local financial advisor who understands each particular client’s needs.”
The improved governance and shared fiduciary responsibility that OCIO provides can help clients better manage risk. OCIO also moves many administrative burdens from the client to UBS through a disciplined process that keeps clients focused on results. In addition, Institutional Consultants deliver regular performance reports and economic and market intelligence to help keep clients updated and on track.
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrPhoto: Michael J. Kelly, CFA, global head of multi-asset at PineBridge Investments. PineBridge: “Asset Allocation Is The Biggest Decision In Every Portfolio”
As volatility increases throughout global markets and returns lower, investors are facing a turning point. Michael J. Kelly, CFA, global head of multi-asset at PineBridge Investments, explains why asset allocation -along with a dynamic approach- is more important than ever.
What is going on in markets now?
Today’s volatility is the result of forces that have been building for a while. For many years, the global savings rate was relatively stable. Then, just before the global financial crisis, it stepped up. We saw extreme caution from businesses, central banks, and investors. Far fewer people and institutions were investing.
This was one of the biggest ever tailwinds for financial assets. Too much money was chasing too few opportunities. Meanwhile, central banks were growing their balance sheets relative to global economic growth. So they’ve been adding liquidity on top of naturally formed liquidity – another huge tailwind for financial assets.
This caused a global liquidity surge, which caused many investors to lean on growth assets, weighing down prospective returns. However, this challenging market environment also created opportunity for investors who can selectively identify attractive insights and dynamically shift their investment mix.
Now is a good time for investors to start thinking ahead and realizing that the next several years won’t be easy. Unlike during the crisis, which was extremely painful but ended relatively quickly, this will be a slow drip. Expect more risk and not enough return to meet investors’ expectations. And the answer is not diversification alone, but optimal allocation across the investment universe while expressing convictions.
This brings me to asset allocation. This is the biggest decision in every portfolio. It’s not a new concept, but many investors still don’t pay it enough attention.
And that has been fine so far – investors have been playing it safe with few consequences – but the time is coming when markets will reach an inflection point, and investors will need to use asset allocation to help them navigate a world of much lower returns but continued high expectations.
What’s the danger for investors in playing it safe?
We’re entering a period of slowly rising interest rates, and it’s been a while since markets have had to deal with that. For a long time, we’ve been in markets dominated by falling interest rates. You can play it safe without much of a penalty in that world. In periods of disinflation, the correlation between capital conservation assets and growth assets becomes negative. The effectiveness of one to hedge the other goes up. So playing it safe has worked really well as rates have dropped.
But what happens when rates are no longer falling? They’re either flat or rising. While play-it-safe investing lowers the risk, it carries quite a penalty in returns. When inflation and rates are flat and rising, that negative correlation actually becomes positive. We have already started to see this, for instance, in the fourth quarter of 2015, as the market anticipated higher rates by the US Federal Reserve. The effectiveness of those two to balance each other out goes down while the cost goes up, since the differential of returns is much higher.
How can investors best position their portfolios in this environment?
We do see some opportunities, but to explain, let’s go back to the idea of diversification. If you own a little bit of everything in a market capitalization sense, that means you own the slope of our Capital Market Line (CML). The CML is our firm’s five-year forward-looking view into risk and return across the asset class spectrum. Right now we consider its slope to be disappointingly positive.
But there is a silver lining: The dispersion of dots around the line has widened over time, and it’s the widest we’ve seen since we began constructing the CML. This means that the upcoming period will have more winners and more losers. So for investors, it’s a matter of picking more of the winners and avoiding the losers – which, of course, is not as easy as it sounds.
How do you do that?
With more opportunistic investing along with an intermediate-term perspective. You need to be much more opportunistic if you’re going to deliver an outcome over a three-, five-, seven-, or 10-year horizon.
In a world of policy-distorted markets that have created this massive tailwind, we think it’s relatively easy as the environment unwinds to avoid the asset classes that have been helped the most, those that might have the biggest tailwind.
How do you and your team approach asset allocation?
Our approach focuses on growth assets – trying to get growth-asset-like returns with 60% or less of the risk that normally accompanies them. We think the only way to do this is to be much more opportunistic in moving between markets and between growth assets, shifting between growth and capital conservation when necessary. That shift, in fact, can sometimes be as dynamic as a rotation, which we witnessed in the financial crisis.
So I believe in a balance of approaches. But there’s going to be really no alternative in a lower return world with flat or rising rates to being more opportunistic in the growth assets that you pursue. We expect this to lead to investors’ “scavenging” for alpha, which presents its own challenges. The market has grown in terms of people looking for alpha within infrastructure, within stocks, within bonds. Before the crisis, looking for alpha between asset classes was basically talked about and not employed. How are investors gearing up to do that? The answer is not just getting more alpha out of security selection, but finding better, more efficient ways to allocate assets that provide a more consistent alpha source.
Opportunistic investments are providing the unexploited source of alpha to fill in the gap between market returns and investors’ expectations. In the current environment, everyone’s investing in more assets, in more areas of the world. So to get us to those windows of opportunity, we need to move more toward seeking returns through asset allocation.
This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to serve as investment advice. This is not an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase any investment product or security. Any opinions provided should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Any opinions, projections, forecasts and forward-looking statements are speculative in nature; valid only as of the date hereof and are subject to change. PineBridge Investments is not soliciting or recommending any action based on this information.
According to the latest BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research report, conducted from March 4-10, 2016, average cash balances are down to 5.1%, from a 15 year-high of 5.6% in February. While the three top most crowded trades are Shorting Emerging Markets, Long US dollar and Shorting Oil.
“With cash levels now slightly above their 3-year average, investors no longer are sending the unambiguous buy signal we saw last month,” said Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at BofA Merrill Lynch.
During March investors made a strong rotation of positioning into industrials, energy, materials and Emerging Markets, with the biggest monthly jump in allocation to commodities on record. Also, allocation to real estate/REITS experienced its second highest month in survey history.
The survey also noted that investors have flipped their views on credit, with a net 15% believing high yield will outperform high grade in March, versus a net 13% favoring HG in February. Net overweight positions in equities improved.
Regarding the US Monetary Policy, the vast majority of fund managers still expect no more than two Fed hikes in the next 12 months, while a record net 35% think global fiscal policy is still too restrictive, and “quantitative failure” is seen as one of the biggest tail risks.
According to Manish Kabra, European equity and quantitative strategist, “global investors are trimming their extreme regional views and cite ‘quantitative failure’ as the biggest tail risk. However, they remain the least bearish on Europe.” Europe is seen as relative winner as European cash allocations dropped to average levels, and the region remained the most preferred globally; EUR now seen as cheapest since April 2003. Japan has fallen further out of favor as allocation to Japanese equities declines to a 22-month low of net 15% overweight, down from net 24% overweight in February, whereas in Emerging Markets, Chinese growth expectations jump to 4-month highs but a net 26% of investors still expect a weaker Chinese economy over the next 12 months.
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrPhoto: Matthew Grange. Standard Life Wealth Strengthens Investment Team
Standard Life Wealth, the discretionary fund manager, has announced the recent appointment of Matthew Grange and Matthew Burrows as Senior Portfolio Managers based in London. Both are working with UK and International clients and report to Charles Insley, Head of International for Standard Life Wealth.
“We are delighted that Matthew Grange and Matthew Burrows have joined Standard Life Wealth. They both have very strong investment backgrounds and have joined us to work with UK and International clients. As long term investors we offer clients investment strategies across the full risk spectrum and have an investment process that focuses on gaining exposure to secular growth drivers, which we believe will out-perform the broader market over the long term. Both Matthew Grange and Matthew Burrows are excellent additions to the team and bring valuable insight and institutional expertise to our investment process,” said Charles Insley, Head of International, Standard Life Wealth.
Matthew Grange has over 18 years of private client and institutional investment management experience. He spent over twelve years managing institutional UK equity portfolios for ABN Amro Asset Management and the corporate pension schemes for Lafarge and Reed Elsevier. In addition to his experience managing substantial UK equity portfolios, Matthew has experience of many other asset classes, particularly commercial property and private equity.
Matthew Burrows has five years of experience in the management of discretionary portfolios for charities, trusts, pensions and both institutional and private clients’ portfolios. He has managed portfolios for both UK and international clients at Falcon Private Wealth and Sarasin & Partners LLP, covering the full spectrum of traditional asset classes, as well alternatives and derivatives.
Standard Life Wealth, with offices in London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol and Leeds, and an offshore presence in the Channel Islands, provides both target return and conventional investment strategies private clients, trust companies and charities.
According to Detlef Glow, Head of EMEA research at Lipper, assets under management in the European mutual fund industry faced net outflows of €24.5 bn from long-term mutual funds during February.
The single fund markets with the highest net inflows for February were Switzerland (+€1.5 bn), Ireland (+€1.2 bn), Norway (+€0.8 bn), Germany (+€0.4 bn), and Andorra (+€0.1 bn). Meanwhile, Luxembourg was the single market with the highest net outflows (-€18.3 bn), bettered by the United Kingdom (-€2.8 bn) and Spain (-€0.8 bn).
Absolute Return EUR Medium (+€1.6 bn) was the best selling sector for February among long-term funds.
In terms of asset types, Bond funds (-€11.5 bn) were the one with the highest outflows in Europe for February, by equity funds (-€8.4 bn), mixed-asset funds (-€5.8 bn), and “other” funds (-€0.8 bn). On the other side of the table alternative UCITS funds (+€1.1 bn) saw the highest net inflows, followed by real estate products (+€0.6 bn) and commodity funds (+€0.3 bn).
BlackRock, with net sales of €5.4 bn, was the best selling fund group for February overall, ahead of Generali (+€2.9 bn) and Legal & General (+€2.7 bn). MMA II – European Muti Credit BI (CHF hedged) (+€0.7 bn) was the best selling individual long-term fund for February.
Signs of a global economic slowdown have impacted the US equity market this year and led to discussions about a possible recession in both the US economy and US corporate profits. Grant Bowers, vice president, Franklin Equity Group, says current conditions and the outlook for a key economic indicator don’t warrant such strong language. In this Q&A, Bowers maintains that, with the help of stronger consumer spending, the backdrop for the US economy and US companies should remain generally positive for the remainder of 2016.
Concerns about growth in emerging markets and collapsing energy prices have led many to fear that despite generally positive economic data in the United States, we may not be able to avoid lapsing into a recession. This has driven market pessimism to extremely high levels in the first few weeks of 2016. Despite these fears, Bowers continues to believe the US economy is performing well, “and 2016 will likely surprise many with modest corporate earnings growth, strong consumer spending and gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the 2%–3% range. These types of broad-based selloffs typically create opportunities for long-term investors to buy high-quality companies at attractive prices, and we have been actively seeking bargains for our portfolios in recent weeks.”
Despite a rough start to the year, he adds that they “don’t see a recession on the horizon, and believe the US economy is stronger than many believe. Every expansion since World War II has gone through periods of slow growth. I believe that when we look back in the rear-view mirror later this year, we will see this period as a growth pause in a longer expansionary cycle.” Bowers cites the strength of the US consumer as one of the reasons they remain constructive on US equities.
According to him, two key themes that emerged from earnings season. “First, a stronger US dollar was a headwind for many multinational companies, and the currency impact combined with slower global growth resulted in companies with high international exposure experiencing slower growth relative to more domestic or US-focused companies; second, lower oil and gas prices had a negative impact, where year-over-year earnings were down more than 70% for the energy sector, dragging down the average growth rate.” However he believes that “as consumers become more comfortable with lower energy prices, they will start increasing their spending on discretionary goods and increased consumption.”
Him and his team have a positive long-term outlook for technology and health care companies “with a tremendous amount of change likely to take place in the next few years… Some of the areas of technology that we are focused on are cyber security, Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud computing, digital payments, mobility and smart devices. In the health care sector, we continue to like the long-term outlook, where an aging population globally will drive increased consumption of health care services and demand for improved treatments and cures. This demographic tailwind combined with innovation in drug development and medical technology is creating numerous investment opportunities as well.”
Regarding the 2016 US presidential election, he believes the political uncertainty has contributed to some of the volatility we have seen year-to-date. And expects it to continue “until the presidential primaries are settled and we have a better understanding of who the major parties’ nominees are and what their policy proposals will be.”
Toscafund Asset Management and ML Capital are pleased to announce the restructuring and rebranding of the Pegasus UCITS Fund, the inaugural fund of the MontLake UCITS Platform. Launched in September 2010, the fund is now re-launching as the Tosca Micro Cap UCITS Fund. MontLake is a leading independent platform for UCITS funds that provides investors with access to a range of liquid, transparent and regulated investment products domiciled in Ireland.
The Fund will invest primarily in UK listed “micro cap” companies (defined as companies with a market capitalisation of up to £250m) and will seek to exploit inefficiencies in this sector of the market. This is a large universe of companies, many of which receive little coverage and are poorly understood in the market. Toscafund has a proven track record over the long term in UK mid-cap and small-cap investing, and the Tosca Micro Cap UCITS Fund is a natural extension of this same fundamental, value-orientated strategy, applied to the opportunity-rich UK micro cap sector.
The Fund will be led and managed by Matthew Siebert and supported by analysts Daniel Cane and Jamie Taylor. They work with and are supported by the team of investment professionals within Toscafund, many with over 20 years of investment experience. The Fund will capitalise on Toscafund’s mid cap expertise, employing the same core skill sets and doing deep dive research into companies, markets, sectors and peers, and benefitting from the existing relationships with analysts, brokers and companies.
The Tosca Micro Cap UCITS Fund’s capacity will be set at £50m, and Toscafund partners intend to invest a minimum of 10% in the Fund. The revised investment policy will also allow for investment of up to 20% of the NAV in companies that have a larger capitalisation, of up to £1bn. The Fund will have a diversified portfolio of 30 to 40 holdings, with risk limits governing position sizing.
According to Cyril Delamare, CEO of ML Capital: “Pegasus was the first fund to launch on the MontLake Platform, and it is exciting for us to see it develop as the Tosca Micro Cap UCITS Fund. Toscafund are a best in class manager and are committed to growing the fund to its full potential – we look forward to its progress in the year ahead.”
Martin Hughes, Founder and CEO of Toscafund said: “I look forward to investing in the Tosca Micro Cap UCITS Fund as the fund managers will uncover hidden gems, companies with high growth prospects that are neglected by mainstream funds as the valuations are deemed too small. This will be a very profitable strategy and an area where you find the acorns that then turn into oak trees.”
