Factsheet: July 2021
Strategy
The Fund's objective is to achieve optimal long-term capital growth through active management of a portfolio of large-capitalisation stocks based primarily in North America.
The investment strategy is based on fundamental analysis. The stock selection process is based in particular on the activities of the companies, their governance, financial structure and development perspectives. The fund aims above all to identify companies with dominant positions, with a significant reinvestment capacity and low levels of gearing.
The recommended investment period is 5 years. The reference currency is the US Dollar.
Markets
Following a negative start due to disappointing employment figures and fears about the evolution of the Delta variant, the US markets finally recorded a positive month of July, as the S&P 500 gained +2.30%, the Dow Jones Industrials +1.30% while the NASDAQ 100 gained +3.35%.
Fears about inflation have dissipated, thanks in particular to the reassuring speeches of Jerome Powell, chairman of the FED, who highlighted that economic objectives were still far from being achieved and that the monetary policy committee would only take action if inflation would persistently exceed the 2% mark. The US 10-year rate finally ended the month below 1.20%.
Markets have also benefitted from the quarterly results reporting season. The vast majority of companies across all sectors actually announced positive figures. On a sectoral basis, the top performer of the month was steel (+8.43%), while the gambling sector corrected severely (-15.68%).
The Fund
The fund gained ground on the S&P 500 index (+3.97% vs. +2.30%). Waters (+12.79%), Alphabet (+10.35%) and Verisk Analytics (+8.71%) are the top three performers of the month, while PayPal (-5.47%), Brown-Forman (-5.36%), and Verisign (-4.97%) are the last three.
The sector rotation, which started in June, is still on- going thus causing the stocks we favour to continue to catch up with quarterly results still being published despite some slight corrections that occurred following publications, such as for Facebook, our reading of the results fully underpins the validity of our strategies.
For more information, please email us: contact@fisconsult-sinews.com