MAB Quarterly Review Q1 2025 - Cautious - Flipbook - Page 7
over the quarter. This strategy, which focuses on out-of-favour small US companies, has struggled to keep
up with the exceptional returns generated by the large-cap US Tech companies which dominate the S&P
500 US Equity Index in recent years, however lately the returns of this manager have seen a resurgence.
This has been driven by the likelihood of lower interest rates, which will be bene昀椀cial to any indebted companies
they hold, as well as the fact that smaller companies are less global and therefore less impacted by tariffs.
Another strong equity manager over the quarter was the Baillie Gifford Paci昀椀c Fund (+19.3%), which bene昀椀ted
from a resurgence in the growth style in the Asia Paci昀椀c region, and in particular, the performance of Chinese
equity markets. .
Fixed Income
Your Fund’s Fixed Income managers had another successful quarter, which was led by the Morgan Stanley
Emerging Market Local Income Fund, which returned +3.5% over the quarter. This was primarily driven by the
high local interest rates available in these emerging market economies and benign in昀氀ation. The long-dated
US Treasury Bond ETF also performed well, returning +3.1% as labour market weakness in the US became
more pronounced.
Property, Real Assets & Absolute Return
The other diversifying strategies continued to deliver very strong returns over the third quarter, reinforcing
the bene昀椀ts of these lower correlation strategies in our Multi-Asset Blend portfolios.
This was led by the AQR Managed Futures Fund, which sits in your Property & Real Assets asset class and
returned +7.0% for the quarter, boosted by strong trends in Emerging Market equities. Other strong performers
in that asset class included the Xtrackers Physical Carbon EUA ETC (up +12.0% over the quarter) and the
diversi昀椀ed commodity exposure accessed via the UBS BCOM CMCI ETF, which returned +3.9%, boosted by
the strong returns from gold over the quarter.
Your blend of Absolute Return managers also had a successful quarter, led by the Sanlam Multi Strategy Fund,
which returned +3.8% as their exposure to equity markets was nicely supplemented by continually high yields
achieved on their short-dated Fixed Income holdings. The recently introduced Man Credit Opportunities
Alternative Fund has already started adding value to your Fund in a highly diversi昀椀ed way, returning +2.7%
for the quarter.
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