The green-fingered bunch over at Evelyn Partners have built upon their US equity position in their latest portfolio rebalance.
They’ve added FTGF Clearbridge US Equity Sustainability Leaders to the pack, in a move the portfolio managers hope will complement their existing allocation to Brown Advisory US Sustainable Growth with a "broader and more balanced style".
With this move, Evelyn becomes the fifth allocator to own the Clearbridge mandate, which makes it the joint most-popular US equity offering in our ESG database along with the Brown Advisory fund.
The fund is just over £1bn in size and its three largest holdings are Microsoft, Apple, and JPMorgan.
Elsewhere, Evelyn increased their weighting to fixed income and this move was funded by a reduction in exposure to alternatives.
Specifically, the team reduced exposure to its two absolute return funds, JPM Global Macro Sustainable and Trojan Ethical to take advantage of opportunities in the bond market.
“Within fixed income we continued to add primarily to US sovereign bonds, which currently offer elevated yields relative to history and provide stability in the event of tougher than expected market conditions,” said Philippa Douglas, assistant manager in the sustainable team. “They also offer the potential for upside in the event of interest rate cuts in the US later in the year.”
On that note, Asset Allocator recently covered the travails of the sustainable equity sector when viewed through the lens of Bestinvest’s ‘Spot the Dog’ criteria.
More than 40 per cent of global mandates deemed ‘dogs’ in this year’s survey have a sustainable bent and we peered into what this means for our allocators.
However, it’s worth noting that US sustainable funds fared much better in the rankings, probably because they quite strikingly resemble bog-standard US equity funds which, if you hadn’t heard, are doing just fine.
