Insights

The spectre of a banking crisis returned to haunt markets in March, with the collapse of two mid-sized banks in the US, as well as the fall of the much bigger Credit Suisse into the hands of its rival UBS, a transaction orchestrated by Swiss regulators. (more…)

The key thing I’d highlight this month is actually the downside protection – Cautious Income is down 2.2% from the recent peak in early September vs a 7.8% fall for the S&P 500 and 9.4% for both the Nasdaq and FANG+ indices (not saying they deserve to be compared but many have done so whilst tech was going up!).

Yes MSCI World is flat year to date (to the 25th unlike data below), but we know that has been almost entirely driven by the performance of the mega cap growth / tech stocks which we naturally do not have much exposure to in the Cautious Income fund, given they pay little to no income.

The coronavirus crisis is an era defining event; life before coronavirus and life afterwards. Above all it is a humanitarian crisis on an epic scale, the speed of its destruction fully illustrated by its spread. It has delivered an economic shock and market declines with a speed and severity unprecedented in modern times. However, the free fall in markets was stopped when the Federal Reserve and other big central banks stepped in with massive support packages and as a result markets rallied sharply from the late March lows.

An opportunity to offer clients a fixed quarterly dividend of 2%** for 3.5 years linked to some of the best performing and best known companies in the world.

With the unprecedented levels of volatility witnessed since February 19th it is very tempting to focus on the short term and the effect on the investment performance whilst losing sight of the benefits of longer term investing.

The graphs herewith show Trough to Trough Market Cycle performance of the GBP, USD & EURO Harmony Funds as benchmarked against the stated targeted returns of these funds. As you can see they have exceeded target in each case, demonstrating the effectiveness of the management team and the worth of investing over the longer term.

In extremely volatile markets as we have seen recently, loss aversion markedly increases. This is an important psychologically concept and is encapsulated in the expression “losses loom larger than gains” (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). It is thought that the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining.

As an antidote, please find attached 7 Reasons for Investors to be Optimistic.

We hope that this document assists you in these turbulent times.

We are available to answer any questions that you may have. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Harmony – benefits of a multi-asset approach i.e. minimizing downside while still benefiting from the upside.

Following last week’s equity market sell-off on the back of markets’ concerns over the impact of the Coronavirus we thought it timely to supply you with a special update in addition to your regular monthly performance and risk statistics report.

Obviously this virus is of great concern to all, already infected thousands and claimed many lives which is a travesty, however its economic effect is not yet quantifiable and its impact till recent on capital markets have been largely muted.

We are pleased to confirm the launch of the Harmony Portfolios Global Equity Fund. The Fund is invested directly in equities around the world, managed by experienced specialists. The overall portfolio is style-balanced and well-diversified across sectors and countries.

2019 proved to be a fantastic year in the financial markets with almost all major investment types posting very strong gains. Markets continued to make good progress in December, in stark contrast to the same month of the previous year. Equity markets led the way while major bond markets were mostly flat or down over the month. Emerging market equities outperformed, much of which came from the 5.8% gain for the Asia ex Japan region, while the global developed markets index returned 3.0%.