POWERED BY MOMENTUM MEDIA
Investors retreat into defensive assets
Rising bearishness among investors has led to a retreat into defensive assets, according to the latest quarterly manager and intelligence trends report from Bfinance.
Against a backdrop of surging inflation and rapidly rising interest rates, the report noted that investors were challenged to rethink their vulnerability to equity market volatility.
A fallback into defensive assets was reflected by the Bfinance Risk Aversion Index, which moved deeper into bearish, risk-off territory, rising from 0.79 to 0.82 in the second quarter of the year.
Among the multi-asset managers tracked for the index, equity exposure fell to less than 32% (3 percentage points below the long-term average), while weightings to fixed income and other diversifiers rose to 68%.
According to August’s report, as investors sought out new sources of portfolio diversification, income and inflation protection and real estate attracted 31% of all new mandate searches, while private markets represented 68% of all new search activity for the 12 months ended 30 June 2022.
Equity mandate searches fell in the second quarter, accounting for just 20% of all new search activity over this period. Fixed income searches remained unchanged year over year at 15% of all new activity.
Despite the turbulence in public markets, the report noted that hedge funds and other liquid alternative strategies continued to provide investors with a “significant source” of diversification and returns.
While overall search activity for so-called diversifying strategies remained virtually flat at 11%, Bfinance noted a rising percentage of overlay strategies being implemented by its clients during the period, which resulted in this segment outstripping all others on a ‘proportion of assets’ basis.
AUTHOR
Staff Writer
Money Management staff writers are writers who contribute to the website from time to time. If you would like to discuss the content contained within this article please contact us.
Recommended for you
Economic growth was weaker than expected, once again highlighting an economy largely sustained by population growth and government spending.
In this latest edition, Anna Shelley, CIO at AMP, shares the fund’s approach to current market conditions and where it continues to uncover key opportunities.
The mega fund has announced a $2.2 billion investment in a leading data centre platform, bringing its global real assets portfolio to nearly $60 billion.
In this latest edition, Australian Retirement Trust’s head of global real assets Michael Weaver explains the fund’s approach to finding new opportunities as it surpasses $300 billion in funds under management.
TOP PERFORMING FUNDS
ACS FIXED INT - AUSTRALIA/GLOBAL BOND
Fund name
3y(%)pa
1
Spire Oaktree Opportunities XI Second Close
36.43 3 y p.a(%)
2
Spire Oaktree Opportunities XI First Close USD
35.08 3 y p.a(%)
3
DomaCom Lot 21 Chellaston Road Munno Para West SA 5115 Australia
31.72 3 y p.a(%)
4
Fidante Credit Suisse Global Private Equity
29.60 3 y p.a(%)
5
Global X GlobalX FANG+ ETF
27.64 3 y p.a(%)
