Asset Allocator has never been afraid to eat a burger for the cause.
And sticking closely to that line of duty, with a side order of chips, we recently caught up with James Burns who runs the Active model portfolio range at Evelyn Partners.
Burns has recently turned bullish on bonds and a little bearish on equities.
He said he has been reducing equity weightings a little as he feels there is “more uncertainty” around the outlook for that asset class than before.
Most of the extra exposure to fixed income came from increasing positions in existing holdings, including Vanguard’s US Government Bond Index, Artemis Corporate Bond, and M&G Emerging Market Bond.
Those active funds are popular with the DFMs we monitor, the Artemis fund is the second most popular corporate bond fund among the allocators we cover, appearing in five portfolios.
M&G Emerging Market Bond is comfortably the most owned EM debt fund among the allocators we cover, appearing in eight portfolios, and picking up a net of one net buyer in 2023.
While the equity book overall has been reduced, the team did add a number of niche equity holdings, including the GQG US Equity fund, which has been added to the lowest risk portfolio they run.
It also added Federated Hermes Asia Ex Japan, in the highest risk portfolio, and infrastructure investment trust INPP, which has a high yield.
The Hermes fund has been popular with the DFMs we cover this year, picking up two new buyers to appear in five of the portfolios we monitor.
However, as the chart (above) from FE shows, it has struggled in performance terms, underperforming the index on a five-year view, although it has done a bit better of late.
According to the factsheet, the investment objective of the fund is to achieve long-term capital appreciation by investing in a portfolio of equity securities and equity-related securities.
david.thorpe@ft.com
