Top Picks of the Month – March 2022
We show here a selection of funds that might be of interest to you. They were chosen either for their outstanding performance, which is likely to continue, or for their potential for attractive returns or diversification given current and expected market conditions.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, put the geopolitical risk at the forefront of investors and world’s attention. It triggered an immediate risk-off scenario in markets with volatility spiking sharply while commodities continued to rally, fuelling further inflationary pressures. Safe heavens such as gold, USD, CHF, or real assets managed to remain positively orientated.
Unsurprisingly, Continental European equities were hit hardest given their closer trading links with Russia, with European banks the worst affected industry while defensives sectors outperformed.
All the sub-segment of the Fixed Income were down, with emerging debt experiencing the worst drawdown across hard, local and corporate areas.
In this context, as in January, the more decorrelated strategies such as AXA IM WAVe Cat Bonds (+0.2%), Janus Henderson Global Equity Market Neutral (-0.2%) or Prosper Stars & Stripes (-0.2%) posted among the best performances.
The surge of oil & gas prices was a strong support for renewables and Mandarine Global Transition (+0.7%) particularly. The more defensive assets also benefitted from the huge risk aversion, among others M&G Global Listed Infrastructure (+0.0%).
Although T. Rowe Price Responsible EM Corporate Bond (-2.9%) and BNY Mellon EM Corporate Debt (-3.8%) posted negative performance, they managed to outperformed significantly their JPM CEMBI benchmark (-4.8%), highlighting the value-added of active managers in such markets.