In April the average prudential balanced portfolio returned 2.36% (Mar: 1.28%). Top performer is Allan Gray (3.97%); while Stanlib (1.25%) takes the bottom spot. For the 3 month period Investec takes top spot, for the sixth consecutive month, outperforming the 'average' by roughly 1.6%. On the other end of the scale Prudential underperformed the 'average' by 0.80%.

As in the previous month, there has once again been very little change in some of the key global economic indicators during April. WTI (West Texas Intermediate) oil price in US$ increased by 17%, but as the result of the strengthening of the Rand against the US$ by 2% from 12.14 to 11.91, it only increased by 15% in Rand terms from R 593 to R 681. 12 Month foreign investment portfolio flows and the SA trade balance have changed insignificantly over the month, but represent a significant outflow of R 105 billion over the past year. Of course we know that interest rates have not changed either overseas or in SA, and the imminence of the US repo rate changing is as far or as close as it was 6 months ago.

Investment markets are currently very much a hostage of global monetary policy and market movement is a function of how much money is pumped into the system, for how long, by central banks. Although the US economy started to respond positively to the Fed's stimulus measure, it seems as if the phasing out of these measures has put the economic recovery into a wobble the final direction of which is not clear at this stage.