The FSA Spy market buzz – 22 November 2024
Dimensional excludes the Middle Kingdom; JP Morgan’s optimistic outlook; Household wealth is rocketing; Schroders is thinking about privates; Ninety One’s pithy AI; German woes and much more.
Several fund managers believe that stocks that have been heavily hit by Covid-19 should provide investors with opportunities this year on the back of an expected global economic recovery.
One of them is European equities, which posted negative returns for the most part of last year. However, the asset class started to recover in late-November, with the MSCI AC Europe Index returning on positive ground at around 5% for the full year, according to data from FE Fundinfo. Year-to-date ending 14 January, the index is up 2.7%.
Since last month, managers have recommended clients to start diversifying toward the asset. For example, Matt Quaife, head of multi-asset investment management for Asia, said that West European equities are highly geared to positive vaccine news. They have also become very cheap, with the Stoxx 600 index’s two-year forward price-earnings ratio trading at 20% discount to the MSCI World.
Echoing Quaife, Tai Hui, Asia chief market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management, said that the broader economic recovery should benefit European equities and that investors should also start investing in the asset class.
Against this backdrop, FSA asked Darius McDermott, managing director at Chelsea Financial Services, to compare two European equity products: The Aberdeen Standard (ASI) Sicav European Equity Ex UK Fund and the Jupiter European Growth Fund.
Aberdeen Standard | Jupiter | |
Size (Ucits / US-domiciled) | €136.1m ($165.24m) | €1.36bn ($1.65bn) |
Inception (Ucits / US-domiciled) | 2006 | 2001 |
Manager | Ben Ritchie, Kurt Cruickshank, Roseanna Ivory | Mark Heslop, Mark Nichols |
Three-year cumulative return | 32.32% | 24.13% |
Three-year annualised return | 10.21 | 8.07 |
Three-year annualised alpha | 5.62 | 5.78 |
Three-year annualised volatility | 20.34 | 20.91 |
Morningstar analyst rating | Neutral | Neutral |
Morningstar star rating | ***** | ***** |
FE Crown fund rating | ***** | ***** |
OCF | 1.69% | 1.72% |
Dimensional excludes the Middle Kingdom; JP Morgan’s optimistic outlook; Household wealth is rocketing; Schroders is thinking about privates; Ninety One’s pithy AI; German woes and much more.
Part of the Mark Allen Group.