2019/01/03 00:00:00

Fund review
The STANLIB Balanced Fund produced a return of +1.4% over the past quarter ended 30 September 2018, outperforming its benchmark return of -0.9%.
Market overview
The third quarter of 2018 saw an increase in emerging market selling pressure, led by deeper sell-offs in Turkey and Argentina, but spread to varying degrees across other countries with China being hard hit given that they are at the centre of US president Trump’s trade war intensification leading up to the US mid-term elections in November. The investment world has been struggling to deal with an environment of stronger US GDP growth but weakening growth elsewhere. This has led to a stronger US dollar, while US bond yields continue to rise with the US Fed on a rate hiking path over the foreseeable future. This in turn has put emerging market central banks under pressure to also raise rates, but this has proved difficult in a world seeing global trade declining and hence growth and currencies under pressure. From a local investors’ perspective, the only positive was further rand weakness, which meant positive returns from offshore equities (+8.1%), offshore bonds (+2.0%) and offshore cash (+3.7%).
Within South Africa, the big news in the third quarter was confirmation of a first half recession with negative Q2 growth. This, together with the general emerging market selling pressure, saw the local equity market (SWIX) down -3.3% in the quarter led by Industrials (-7.8%) and Property (-1.0%), while Financials (+2.8%) and Resources (+5.2%) managed to buck the trend. The Industrials sector was hit by selling in some index heavyweights for different company-specific reasons, with Aspen (-34.4%), MTN (-18.8%) and Naspers (-12.4%) at the forefront.
Looking ahead
The global growth outlook is one that has shifted from last year’s synchronised growth with the US continuing to power ahead following this year’s tax cuts, while the rest of the world continues to weaken from the positive growth bias of last year. While global trade continues to slowdown as the trade war intensifies, it appears that overall global growth will stay above trend for this year and 2019. This feeds into positive earnings growth, which together with relatively cheap valuation levels outside of the US, gives a reasonably positive investment backdrop for equities. In managing your fund, we are always cognisant of both the positive tailwinds, as well as the risks that are inevitable the longer this cycle persists. We take out protection against market corrections when we believe it’s appropriate, but we continue to believe that exposure to a mix of diversified asset classes both locally and offshore provide you with an optimal solution to generate above inflation returns over the long term.
The commentary gives the views of the portfolio manager at the time of writing. Any forecasts or commentary included in this document are not guaranteed to occur.