April was a month of retreat for the equity market after a strong start to the year. MSCI world index fell by 4.85%. The retreat was spread across the market with MSCI world value index falling by 3,6% and MSCI world growth index falling by 4.1%.
All returns are in USD
Macroeconomic developments in the developed world continued to drive the market. In the United States it was also earnings season. The higher-than-expected inflation and retail sales in the US led market participants to downgrade their probabilities of interest rate cuts in the US. This led to the derating of the equity market. The lower-than-expected GDP growth rate did little to convince market participants that a soft landing remains on the cards. The earnings for the big technology companies came in healthy which provided support for the market. The treasuries market remained under pressure throughout the month with 10-year treasury yields rising from 4.201% to 4.681%. This had negative contribution to the performance of the fund.
In Japan, the persistent inflation and weakness in the Yen against other developed market currencies provided support for the Japanese market. In Japanese Yen, the Topix index was only down 0.9%. In Europe, inflation is at 2.4% and GDP growth rate improved from the negative print we saw in the previous quarter. Given that the inflation in Europe is closer to the ECB target level of 2% and the GDP growth rate is weak we expected a rate cut. The ECB held its interest rate level unchanged.
The fund’s performance was negatively impacted by our allocation to bonds which the benchmark does not have. Our equity exposure continues to perform as expected with our key themes in cybersecurity and cloud computing taking a breather from the rally in the first few months of the year. Our exposure to Japanese equities contributed positively. European value exposure also had a positive contribution to the performance.
In conclusion, we still think the pause in inflation softening is no cause for concern. We think the market has over-reacted to the pause in US inflation. We are considering tilting our fixed income allocation towards Europe because we think their inflation has fallen at the back of weak fundamentals. As a result, we think lower interest rates Europe will come sooner than in the US. We still think soft landing in the US is on the cards. We therefore maintain a fixed income allocation. We are also still overweight equities, especially US and Japanese equities. US equities continue to be driven by healthy earnings growth and the valuations are reasonable which reduces the risk of derating. In Japan, the weak Yen supports exporters, and the Japanese persistent inflation supports wage growth and costs pass through by companies which will help companies maintain healthy earnings growth.