Market Overview
April 2018
Recent Global Market Turmoil
The FTSE 100 index of leading shares has fallen by about 600 points in the past three months and, despite a recent rally, is almost 3.5 per cent below its peak of 7,778 in mid-January. So far the falls represent a correction rather than a crash, but they serve as a warning to investors.
April has a steady trickle of downbeat news, including:
Whilst there are always conflicting signs regarding economic growth and the prospects for investors, the Reeves Investment Team remain cautious in the current uncertain environment. Our main priority at the moment is to protect our clients’ wealth. Whilst we retain a diversified, risk-averse exposure to a wide range of geographical and market sectors, we are maintaining a sizeable cash reserve and maintaining a cautious approach to our overall investment strategy for the time being.
This approach is paying off for our clients, with all of our model investment portfolios outperforming the FTSE Allshare Index over the first quater of 2018
Once again, all of our model investment portfolios have performed better than our FTSE All-Share Index benchmark over the past quarter. Also, our model portfolios have behaved in the orthodox manner we would expect during a market correction. In a bullish market when the FTSE All-Share index is in positive territory, we would expect our Adventurous model portfolio to outperform our Balanced portfolio and for our conservative Cautions fund to bring up the rear. Conversely, when there is a market correction and the FTSE All-Share index is in negative territory, we would expect our Cautious model portfolio to show more resistance/resilience, and perform better than our Balanced and Adventurous portfolios.
Reeves Model Investment Portfolios
Although it’s been a challenging start to the year in performance terms, we have been consistently pleased with the ongoing resilient performance of our model investment portfolios. The year ahead poses many macroeconomic & political challenges both domestically & globally, but we have positioned the portfolios to offer wide diversification, underpinned by a solid cash element whilst market uncertainty and volatility persists. Alongside extensive geographical and market sector diversification, we have recently realigned our strategic exposure special situations, in order to exploit parts of the market that are unloved, undervalued and where sustainable growth prospects are very much under-appreciated. As such, we remain very confident that the strategy we are pursuing is highly appropriate for the prevailing economic and market conditions, and capable of delivering attractive, positive long-term returns.
Below, you can see the individual fund performances of the selected investments within our model portfolios. (Ordered Monthly)
Source: FE Analytics software provided by Financial Express Investments Ltd (part of Financial Express (Holdings) Limited) as at 01 May 2018.
** The history of this unit/share class has been extended, at FE's discretion, to give a sense of a longer track record of the fund as a whole.