The report is divided into the following sections:

1)       A summary of  Fund  performance 

The table below shows the average March 2019, Q1 2019 and 5 year returns for the mandates in our database.  As can be seen, the benefit of the US interest rate led rally  was felt most significantly in the Q1 2019 numbers for US Funds and Income Funds (> +14%). In March it was the turn of the Regional Infrastructure Funds to see a significant improvement (+8%).  It is interesting to note that for Global Real Estate Funds and Global Infrastructure Funds the Q1 rally was equivalent to 50-60% of the 5 year returns.  

2)       Focus : Quarterly  Performance Review (p3)

This month we look at the Q1 2019 performance of our different fund mandates and establish that:

i)                     Across the mandates around 75% of averageQ1 returns were established in January. Europe was the most front end loaded with a Jan return of 10.2% vs a Q1 return of 11.2%. 

ii)                   Global real estate outperformed global infrastructure in January, March and Q1.

iii)                  Large funds outperformed small funds for Global Real Estate, US Real Estate, Income and Regional Infrastructure. Small Funds outperformed larger funds in Asia, Europe, and Global Infrastructure.

iv)                  On a 5 year basis returns for Income and Regional Infrastructure Funds are ahead of Global Real Estate, which is ahead of Global Infrastructure

v)                   In Q1 (with the exceptions of Global Infrastructure and the US Funds) actively managed large funds outperformed passive funds

vi)                  In terms of alternative strategies, the obvious best performers were the leveraged bull strategies (+39%) and the worst performers were the leveraged bear strategies (-32%). Elsewhere, Housebuilders (+19%) and Active ETF strategies (+17%) produced the highest returns in Q1. 

3)       Detailed performance statistics by mandate for Q1 2019 (p6)

This month we look at the data for Q1 2019. For each mandate we show: the dispersion of returns by Fund AUM, aggregate performance by size, active vs passive performance, Benchmark Index returns, and the best performing active funds above an AuM threshold for each mandate.  For consistency, all returns are rebased in US$.

Finally, it is important to note that there are no recommendations or investment advice contained in this publication, and that it is not intended for retail investors.  This report represents only a very small summary of the outputs of our database, and the bespoke research and advisory service work we undertake for clients.  For further details of our work please contact us.