Over a 12-month-rolling period, only 20% of Europe managers and 31% of US managers as well as 21% of emerging markets managers outperformed their benchmarks net of fees. The underperformance of small caps in a declining market hurt most managers as a majority had an overweight in this market cap cluster.
In February, the performance of active managers in the US was very convincing. 69% of US-managers outperformed their respective indices net of fees. The picture in the emerging markets is with 54% also quite good. In Europe, 48% of the managers beat their indices net of fees. During the continued market recovery in February, small caps in the US significantly outperformed large caps, which was again the main reason for the good performance of US managers. This was not the case in Europe where large caps outperformed small caps. In Europe, sectors like real estate, telecom and utilities showed weak performance. As most Europe managers have a low exposure to those industries, it helped the relative performance versus benchmark.
Please find the full fundinfo Research News – March 2019 edition including a summary of manager meetings attached on the left.