Funds Hub
Money managers under the microscope
from Global Investing:
LIPPER-Toil triumphs over talent for ‘star’ fund managers
The tumult caused by Richard Buxton’s move from Schroders to Old Mutual in March highlighted the veneration of “star” fund managers, those select few who apparently rise above the crowd to shine their light upon adoring investors.
We don’t need to dwell on Buxton’s track record (annualised return on his UK Alpha Plus fund of 13.7 percent over 10 years), but combined with Mark Lyttleton's departure from BlackRock - his own star rather faded of late - I am drawn to ponder the funds industry’s views of, and hunger for, stellar talent.
It is attractive, and reassuring even, to believe that the people running our money are blessed with some innate skill for playing the markets, but I recently had to re-consider my own views on natural talent when talking to Matthew Syed, now a journalist and author, but previously England’s number 1 table tennis player for a decade. A competitor at two Olympic Games and winner of three Commonwealth Gold medals, Syed has some experience of being praised for his apparent natural ability.
He contends that some of our most cherished notions about natural talent are misplaced. Instead he argues persuasively that practice, opportunity and belief are far more important than genetics in determining success.
In a nutshell, Syed asserts that “when you look at the science rather than our own implicit biases, you arrive at the conclusion that champions are not born, they are made.”
from Global Investing:
Rotation schmotation
We're at risk of labouring this point, but there has been some more evidence that this year's equity rally has not been spurred by a shift away from fixed income. The latest data from our corporate cousins at Lipper offer pretty definitive proof that there has been no Great Rotation, at least not from bonds to stocks.
Worldwide mutual fund flows numbers for February showed an overall move into equity funds of more than $22 billion, and a net flow to bond funds of about half that. Over 3 months it's a similar story, with a net inflow to equities of about $84 billion while bond funds sit close behind at about $75 billion. Little wonder then that there is some evidence at least of movements out of money market funds.
from Global Investing:
Clearing a way to Russian bonds
Russian debt finally became Euroclearable today.
What that means is foreign investors buying Russian domestic rouble bonds will be able to process them through Belgian clearing house Euroclear, which transfers securities from the seller's securities account to the securities account of the buyer, while transferring cash from the account of the buyer to the account of the seller. Euroclear's links with correspondent banks in more than 40 countries means buying Russian bonds suddenly becomes easier.And safer too in theory because the title to the security receives asset protection under Belgian law. That should bring a massive torrent of cash into the OFZs, as Russian rouble government bonds are known.
In a wide-ranging note entitled "License to Clear" sent yesterday, Barclays reckons previous predictions of some $20 billion in inflows from overseas to OFZ could be understated -- it now estimates that $25 to $40 billion could flow into Russian OFZs during 2013-2o14. Around $9 billion already came last year ahead of the actual move, Barclays analysts say, but more conservative asset managers will have waited for the Euroclear signal before actually committing cash.
from Global Investing:
Emerging corporate bond boom stretches into 2013
The boom in emerging corporate debt is an ongoing theme that we have discussed often in the past, here on Global Investing as well as on the Reuters news wire. Many of us will therefore recall that outstanding debt volumes from emerging market companies crossed the $1 trillion milestone last October. This year could be shaping up to be another good one.
January was a month of record issuance for corporates, yielding $51 billion or more than double last January's levels and after sales of $329 billion in the whole of 2012. (Some of this buoyancy is down to Asian firms rushing to get their fundraising done before the Chinese New Year starts this weekend). What's more, despite all the new issuance, spreads on JPMorgan's CEMBI corporate bond index tightened 21 basis points over Treasuries.
from Global Investing:
And the winner is — frontier market bonds
Global Investing has commented before on how strongly the world's riskiest bonds -- from the so-called frontier markets such as Mongolia, Nigeria and Guatemala -- have performed. NEXGEM, the frontier component of the bond index family run by JP Morgan, is on track to outperform all other fixed income classes this year with returns of over 20 percent., the bank tells clients in a note today. Just to compare, broader emerging dollar bonds on the EMBI Global index have returned some 16 percent year-to-date while local currency emerging debt is up 13 percent.
That appetite for the sector is strong was proven by a September Eurobond from Zambia that was 15 times subscribed. Demand shows no sign of flagging despite a default in frontier peer Belize and shenanigans over the payment of Ivory Coast's missed coupons from last year. Reasons are easy to find. First, the yield. The average yield on the NEXGEM is roughly 6.5 percent compared with just under 5 percent on the EMBIG.
from Global Investing:
Investors investigated
We've wondered before about the validity of the British 'shareholder spring' narrative. A few high-profile casualties gave the story drama, but as we showed back in the summer, evidence of a widespread change in thinking was hard to find. KPMG has arrived at a similar conclusion this week.
This morning, FairPensions, a British charity which aims to promote responsible investment, has dug deeper into the behaviour of major institutional investors during that supposedly febrile period, and among the nuggets it has produced is the chart below of voting on contentious pay reports at annual meetings.
from Global Investing:
Survival of the fattest?
Is there room only for the biggest, most aggressively-marketed funds in crisis-hit Europe?
Europe's ten best-selling funds have attracted nearly a third of net sales across bonds, equity and mixed assets so far this year, as the grey bars show in the following chart from Thomson Reuters' fund research firm Lipper.
from Global Investing:
Winners, losers and the decline of fear
Lipper has released its monthly look at fund flow trends in Europe, and as ever, it throws up some intriguing results.
August saw bond funds again dominate inflows, pulling in a net 20.8 billion euros and just a tad down on July's record. Stocks funds continued to suffer, as British equity products led the laggards with close to 2 billion euros withdrawn by clients over the month. North American equity funds and their German counterparts also saw big outflows.
from Global Investing:
Funds will find a chill Wind in the Willows: Lipper
"Asset managers are emerging from their comfortable burrow to face a battery of lights."
Sheila Nicoll, Director of Conduct Policy at Britain's Financial Services Authority (FSA), had perhaps been reading Kenneth Grahame before her recent speech, and her words are likely to have sent a chilly wind through the willows of the UK funds industry.
from Global Investing:
Making the most of the shareholder spring
We've had a fair while to ponder the implications of a British AGM season which saw investors oust a few CEOs and deal bloody noses to a few others. We've also had some data which implies the revolt wasn't as widespread as advertised, but Sacha Sadan at Legal and General Investment Management thinks we have seen something important, and something that must be exploited.
His take is that austerity is at the heart of the matter. While the public suffers in a faltering economy, and investors stomach dwindling returns, it was never going to fly that pay deals for bosses should survive unchallenged. Add to that government and media pressure on remuneration, plus a new era of investor collaboration thanks to the stewardship code, and you get an ideal set of factors to drive the 'shareholder spring'.
