In May 2020 the average prudential balanced portfolio returned 0.7% (April 2020: 8.3%). Top performer is Nam Coronation Balanced Plus Fund with 1.6%, while Allan Gray Balanced Fund with -0.5% takes the bottom spot. For the 3-month period, Stanlib Managed Balanced Fund takes the top spot, outperforming the ‘average’ by roughly 3.7%. On the other end of the scale Momentum Namibia Growth Balanced Fund underperformed the ‘average’ by 4.3%. Note that these returns are before (gross of) asset management fees..

The Monthly Review of Portfolio Performance to 31 May 2020 provides a full review of portfolio performances and other interesting analyses.

Will equity markets take Corona in a stride?

Looking back at how global bourses have performed since the global financial crisis in 2007/ 2008, as depicted in graph 1 below, by 2014, all bourses had recovered the market slump resulting from the global financial crisis and since the only new one direction and that was up! This was of course up until Covid 19 struck and bourses plunged by around 20% from end of December 2019 to end of March 2020. At that point many investors went into panic mode and already saw the end of the world closing in on them. Tracking the bourse since then however, markets have recovered about half of the losses incurred up to the end of May and are on a good course June-to-date.

Read part 6 of the Monthly Review of Portfolio Performance to 30 April 2020 to find out what our investment views are.