Performance Commentary

Equity World

After taking a breather until mid-May, the global stock markets stepped on the gas again. The main focus of investors continues to be on inflation and interest rate developments: While heightened inflation expectations dominated in the first half of the quarter, the view that the economy is not threatened by imminent overheating increasingly prevailed in June. This was not least due to the COVID mutations circulating, which were able to dampen the economic outlook a little. The communication of the central banks, which spoke of temporarily increased inflation, also contributed to the fact that the interest rate curves did not shift any further upwards or even decreased somewhat (e.g. in the USD). These circumstances meant that growth stocks performed particularly well. The strong performance was accompanied by declining risk indicators.

This is a market environment in which our risk-based strategies are generally unable to keep pace with the capital-weighted benchmark. Unfortunately, this was also the case in Q2. Until the middle of the quarter, our equity world funds were virtually on a par with their respective benchmarks, but the strong market development in June then led to an underperformance in the final accounts.

Most of the major currencies depreciated against the CHF in Q2. As a result, the hedged fund classes ended the quarter better than the unhedged classes.

Equity Emerging Markets

At the beginning of Q2, many emerging markets lost ground, partly due to rising interest rates in the industrialized countries. However, with the increasing calm on the inflation front and falling USD rates, they recovered again from mid-May. The easing nervousness was also reflected in declining market volatility.

Until mid-May, our risk-based emerging market fund was able to cushion the losses of the broad market well and was ahead of the cap-weighted benchmark. However, with the sharp recovery in June, our strategy could no longer keep pace and closed the quarter with an underperformance.

Equity Switzerland

The sustained positive economic momentum did not stop in Switzerland. The Swiss stock market performed extremely strongly in Q2, especially from mid-May onwards. The noticeable global economic recovery is reflected in very good figures and increased expectations for many Swiss quality stocks. With a plus of 9.5%, the SPI even outperformed the US market, which is otherwise known as a locomotive. In this country, too, market risk eased.

Strongly positive performance coupled with falling risk indicators are generally a bad combination for risk-based investment strategies. It is therefore all the more pleasing that our Swiss Equities fund, at +8.72%, only just lagged the SPI in the past quarter. Since the beginning of the year, it has even outperformed slightly.

Equity Europe ex Switzerland

The positive market trend also continued in Europe. However, share price gains were significantly lower than in the USA. This is due in particular to the lower weighting of growth-oriented technology stocks in Europe. Market risk was significantly more stable than in other universes.

This market constellation meant that our risk-based strategy lagged the capital-weighted benchmark by a much smaller margin than was the case, for example, in the US equity universe.

Both EUR and GBP depreciated against the CHF in Q2. The performance of the fund class with currency hedging was therefore better.

Equity USA

Somewhat subdued inflation expectations and the associated prospect of continued monetary policy easing fueled the U.S. equity market from mid-May onward. Growth-oriented technology stocks, which benefited from declining interest rates, led the field. This price fireworks was accompanied by declining volatility.

Strongly positive markets, declining market risk, and our underweight in megatechs such as Apple, Amazon or Facebook weighed on the relative performance of our risk-based strategy. Until the middle of the quarter, our fund was virtually on par with the benchmark, but then could no longer keep up with the strong performance, especially in June.

The weak USD ensured that the hedged fund class performed slightly better (in CHF +3.30% vs. +2.06%).

Foreign currency bonds (CHF hedged)

Inflation data and interest rate developments are currently dominating events on the financial markets. Thanks to ultra-loose monetary policy and government stimulus packages, the economy is currently running at full speed. This in turn is fueling inflationary pressures, although the central banks have been able to convince the markets that this is a temporary phenomenon. In the past quarter, however, growth and inflation data did not make investors sweat. The economy is growing very strongly, but everything should soon return to normal. So there is no immediate reason to turn the interest rate screw. As a result, yield curves slipped at the long end (especially in North America) and rose somewhat at the short and medium ends in some cases.

The decline in interest rates was most pronounced in the USD. Due to our underweight in USD bonds, this weighed somewhat on the performance of our two foreign currency bond funds. On the other hand, they benefited from the overweights in CAD and AUD. In the final accounts, the long term fund was slightly ahead of the benchmark, while the mid term fund was slightly behind. The lag is due to the fact that the mid term fund tends to be positioned at the shorter end of the duration target range (3-5 years), i.e. where interest rates fell less sharply or even increased.

Bonds CHF

In the course of the quarter, the CHF yield curve, which is still in negative territory, moved marginally upward and thus somewhat in the direction of "normalization". However, there is still a long way to go and there are no signs from the SNB of a key interest rate hike in the near future. Our fund was able to cushion the effects of rising interest rates and negative interest rates thanks to its lower duration and favorable debtor selection. It ended the quarter with a black zero - marginally ahead of the benchmark. 

Mixed fund Smart Invest 65

Our mixed fund with 65% equities closed Q2 slightly lower than the benchmark index (with 40% equities). The higher equity allocation was beneficial in this positive equity market environment, especially the strong positive contribution from Swiss equities. In the equity part, however, the weaker performance of the risk-based components Equity World and Equity Emerging Markets weighed on performance. In the fixed income part, the shorter duration and the underweight in USD prevented a better performance. On the other hand, the higher currency hedging had a positive impact, as most major currencies depreciated against the CHF.

Mixed fund Smart Invest Dynamic

The equity quota in our mixed fund with dynamic allocation increased to around 95% in the course of the quarter (alongside with the decreasing market risk). The high equity quota and the substitution of bonds paid off thanks to the positive, better equity markets. However, this effect was offset by the weaker performance of the risk-based equity components. This weighed on relative performance, resulting in an underperformance in Q2 despite the equity overweight.