November 2020
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ESG funds in TAM portfolios win again.
The Investment Week Sustainable & ESG Investment Awards ceremony took to the virtual stage this year in honour of the fund providers, research and ratings teams who have contributed to the significant progress that has been made this year in driving the growth towards ESG investing. Interest in ethical and sustainable investments has risen dramatically this year, as individuals and institutions have recognised the need to take sustainability risks more seriously in order to protect capital during difficult market conditions, but also to help deliver alpha, by aligning investments to key growth areas which will drive future investment returns, including...
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November 2020
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A generational opportunity for commodities?
News of vaccines coming in will likely prompt other big pharma companies to announce their successes as we move towards Christmas. Whilst that’s going to be a big boost to newspaper headlines for households across the world, I think on Wall Street, each new entrant announcing their success will lose a little market elasticity in terms of reaction size as investors move to a more pragmatic and measured approach to buying into the COVID relief rally. Whilst a more measured response is not as exciting as markets ripping higher, it’s exactly this measured tone of investor reaction which we want....
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November 2020
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(Vaccine) Trials and Tribulations
Yesterday an understandable sense of euphoria swept equity markets only a week after most of Europe was plunged into a second lock-down. Positive vaccine developments and the near certainty of a Democrat in the White House resulted in the best daily stock market performance since March. Sectors that had been effectively written off in the new COVID world roared back to life; travel related companies such as airlines, cruise ship operators, aeroplane engine manufactures, even cinema groups rallied over 30%! Simultaneously companies that have been the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic lost some of their lustre as investors rotated into...
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October 2020
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The rise of passives in ESG investing... It's risky business
We have long been advocates of active investing over the alternative of investing passively into the market via an exchange-traded fund (ETF) or index fund. The recent rise in demand for investments that contribute towards positive Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors has been met by a rapid increase in supply of both active and passive investment options. For us, there is a clear danger in going passive in a market which relies on the integrity of the companies it invests in to keep driving change. What’s more, the traditional benefits of holding passive over active investments are not as...
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August 2020
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US Elections; A Game of Thrones
Make no mistake, the stakes are even higher this time around because Trump is already the sitting president so he’s moved from underdog to top dog and with that voters are going to expect him to up the stakes on the campaign trail. Normally raising the stakes like this might be exciting but with Trump’s behaviour polarising the US voter base like no other President in history, I think it's safe to say this 2020 presidential election will likely go down in history. Now, it wholly depends on your leaning towards Trump which varies from person to person but consensus...
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July 2020
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Q2 in Review; One half, two very different stories.
Q2 has been to the bull market what Q1 was to the bear market. The first quarter saw the MSCI World down 20% in record time (a little over 5 weeks) propelled lower by COVID-19 and a synchronised oil market crash. Inversely, Q2 has turned into one of the best quarters on record for global stock markets with the MSCI World recovering strongly back to pre COVID levels. Irony abounds in this Q2 rally as history will likely show us the second quarter of 2020 was the quarter when the world entered a global recession, not to mention the large...
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July 2020
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Brexit: High Noon at the Last Chance Saloon
It’s strange to be writing once again about Brexit and I suppose that’s indicative of the relapse in new UK COVID-19 cases which is a golden lining to what could rapidly see the resurgence of Brexit volatility coming roaring back. From where I am sitting, with EU / UK trade talks reaching a crunch point in the next couple of weeks. The prospect of a Brexit trade deal is well and truly having a drink at the Last Chance Saloon. What makes the trade deal so interesting is the survival of the UK equity market, fixed income market and the...
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June 2020
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NEW NORMAL – Our Complete COVID-19 Investment Guide
Welcome to our complete investment guide to helping you and your clients navigate through an evolving financial landscape during a pandemic. The coronavirus continues to affect our day-to-day lives and we want to share the ways in which we are adapting to this new reality in order to protect clients’ assets, and our strategy for taking advantage of the inevitable market recovery. Our investment management and operations teams have decades of industry experience, having survived a number of market falls in their lifetime. This has provided them with the depth of knowledge and understanding to manage different market cycles and...
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May 2020
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Liquidity to Insolvency in a Zombie Apocalypse
What is your favourite COVID television series? As many around the world hunker down, online streaming has come into its own. Be it new shows or recycled classics, everyone has their preferred “go to” genre to escape the reality of our self-imposed incarceration. Watching the stock market over the past week I was taken with the idea of “The walking dead” which is essentially a group of characters banding together to survive a zombie ridden dystopia. It drew my focus onto the realities of corporate survival in today’s world and what we might be faced with on the other side...
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May 2020
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Ever seen a Trojan horse made of US Dollars?
Perhaps you, like me, have been watching these markets rallying back to within range of their previous highs at astonishing pace. So much so that this rebound has been coined the most hated rebound in history. Why? Well, it’s caught most investors off-guard who are underweight equities, there also remain a huge amount of investors short of the market (investors who bet on the market falling) and finally, there are record levels of cash sitting on the side-lines not being invested. So where do you sit? Are you cheering them higher or, as I am, watching through parted fingers as...
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April 2020
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Skating on thin ice?
The present financial market conditions represent nothing that we have ever witnessed before and hope we will never witness again. A battle is taking place on the frontline and it’s not only the truly heroic global medical profession that’s fighting it. Who would have believed that, given the global lockdown and huge devastating spikes in unemployment, the almost complete closure of the gig economy, the collapse of company earnings, and core companies abandoning dividend payments would have been taken so lightly? The limitless financial government funding in the US for supporting real estate, high yield investments, mortgage backed bonds and...
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April 2020
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ESG Investing: Loved On The Way Up And On The Way Down
Needless to say that the events of the last several months have caused large scale disruptions to lives of the global population. Perhaps one of the only beneficiaries from the enforcement of global lockdowns across the world is our environment. Our air quality has improved due to the fewer cars on the road, our skies are free from the condensation trails left by aircrafts, while in Italy, the Venice canals have never looked clearer, as motorised boats and giant cruise ships have disappeared. All this has led us to question whether this COVID-19 induced market sell-off will have changed the...
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March 2020
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It’s not about timing the market, but about time in the market.
With global markets staging a healthy recovery last week, investors hold their breath as to where we go from here – higher or lower as the game show likes to say. Central banks and governments the world over have thrown the proverbial kitchen sink at stimulating their economies, so now that silver bullet has been shot, all that remains is for markets to watch the progress of contagion and evaluate how effective the stimulus packages are in offsetting a severe recession. Whilst this is a deeply concerning inflection point for investors, there is some evidence of a Chinese recovery taking...
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March 2020
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Unusual times but it’s business as usual
All of us in business will have been affected operationally by the extraordinary spread of Coronavirus COVID-19 over the past weeks. We wanted to let all of our connections know that as a result of what is our existing business operational integrity, we have needed to take only limited steps to ensure the ongoing functionality and controls over our clients’ assets, their needs and requests, and ongoing efficient portfolio management. As a DFM at the forefront of technology and working with one of the strongest custody agents (Pershing Securities) we are prepared to deal with these exceptional circumstances, albeit not...
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March 2020
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What goes down must come up
“The value of your investments can go down as well as up". Being investment professionals, you will all be familiar with that phrase because it’s plastered on every piece of literature in the investment industry. Whilst it’s unavoidably true, it’s a cold and sterile statement that entirely overlooks the emotional roller coaster that accompanies a major sell-off. We say this because it’s very relevant to the last three weeks in global markets which have seen equities drop inmagnitudes not seen since 2008. Yes, it’s a stressful time for managers of portfolios but we just want to say to all of...
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January 2020
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Feathering The Throttle
TAM Colleagues, have you ever watched a stage of the world rally championship? The only thing more impressive than watching the rally cars drift around impossibly tight corners at breakneck speed is the skill at which it takes the rally driver to achieve this without coming a cropper. 'Feathering the throttle' is a technique used to apply the lightest touch to the accelerator propelling the car around the corner with the perfect balance of speed and control without overshooting and crashing. As with everything that requires skill, it’s hard to do and prone to going wrong. The driver’s fine line...
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December 2019
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Ethical investing: The gift that keeps on giving
As we approach the festive season, and the end of what has been an action-packed year for investors, TAM’s Ethical portfolios have risen above the ranks to deliver some of the strongest returns over their long-term tenure on both an absolute basis and even relative to our ‘mainstream’ portfolios.
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December 2019
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A bad year for liquidity (If you are one of the unlucky)
Whilst the markets continue to show clients positive gains, for some investors a very good year for investmentreturns could have been a very bad year for liquidity. Retaining liquidity is a core part of investment management, maintaining, as it does, clients’ core premise of strongexpectations for liquidity. The drawdown of a pension or an unexpected major life event all require the need toraise capital, and quickly, so the fear of not being able to release your investment monies when you need them, cansend shudders down your spine. Clients’ confidence in the markets’ ability to deliver liquidity when required, is an...
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October 2019
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Three Hours Too Soon Than A Minute Too Late?
It’s been somewhat of a melancholy end to the third quarter for active managers. Two pieces of news have surfaced which serve to take the shine off the benefits of active management. Firstly, the news that the UK’s largest public sector pension scheme has been put under political pressure to dump its sleeve of active managers for passive investments, following the Woodford debacle which the fund had a position in. Woodford’s attempt to drive his flagship fund uncomfortably close to the regulatory red lines of investment suitability has hamstrung the case for active over passive, to the point that our...
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July 2019
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An exciting six months An exciting six months
Through the Lens is back again with the first instalment for 2019 and in the spotlight are our UK CEO, Lester Petch, and Senior Investment Manager, James Penny. Lester and James provide us with an overview of how markets fared in the first six months of 2019, an insight into how our portfolios performed and how we were positioned. James highlights some of our clients' concerns and what we are doing to mitigate those, and Lester lets us in on some exciting corporate developments, and what the next six months has in store for TAM.
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July 2019
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A glittering six months for gold
Over the last year financial markets have taken investors on a rollercoaster ride with markets rising, then tumbling, before recovering to reach all-time highs once again. Through all this, one of the only asset classes that has steadily risen to cut through the volatility is gold. We are pleased to say we joined this trade early, investing through gold-related equities as well as directly via an Exchange-Traded Commodity (ETC) product. And while many asset classes have made a lot of money this year, gold has undoubtedly come to life in recent months and has certainly contributed to TAM’s performance over...
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June 2019
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Are you suffering from FOMO?
“FOMO” or the “Fear Of Missing Out”, might be a phrase you’ve heard bandied about the homestead by your millennial teenagers as they head off to university and is formally defined as, “a feeling of anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere”. TAM Colleagues, “FOMO” or the “Fear Of Missing Out”, might be a phrase you’ve heard bandied about the homestead by your millennial teenagers as they head off to university and is formally defined as, “a feeling of anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere”. Whilst there is no...
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June 2019
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Never put all your eggs in one basket...
Can we offer some words of caution; never put all your eggs in one basket! I am sure you were as surprised and disappointed as I to read on Monday about the suspension of the LF Woodford Equity Income fund. The Fund managed by Neil Woodford (of Invesco Perpetual Income Fund fame) had, due to several reasons including concerns over recent performance, witnessed heightened investor redemptions of late. Assets under management had fallen from a peak of over ten billion pounds two years ago to less than four billion, with outflows reaching a crescendo and resulting yesterday in underlying liquidity...
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May 2019
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Taking a moment to pause...
What do May and October have in common for stock markets? They are both months when investors tend to adopt a decidedly negative view. What do May “Sell in May and go away, come back on St. Leger’s day” is an adage which refers to the custom of leaving London in the hot months between May and September for the cooler climes of the country. To the American trader, and I am paraphrasing somewhat, it means “Sell your riskier stocks and take a summer holiday”. Whilst this sounds like a dubious attempt to link Wall Street’s holiday schedule to stock...
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January 2019
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Active management is dead, long live active management!
Think back to the turn of the millennium, what were you doing? More than likely cracking open the bubbles to see in the dawn of a new era, perhaps some of us were fretting over the infamous Y2K computer meltdown heralded at the stroke of midnight! I think most would agree, since 31st December 1999 we have embarked on an era of exponential growth which has seen unprecedented gains across healthcare, gender equality and advances in technology which continue to develop the very essence of how the human race interacts with one another. Not to mention driverless cars and flying...
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January 2019
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Down but not out!
2018 will hardly be remembered as a vintage year for global markets, in fact, it will likely be lamented with a grimace as the year that broke the back of the 10-year bull run and a year when investors were reminded, uncomfortably, that markets go down, as well as up. The year was mired in equal part because of the double-digit losses across almost every single index but also that these losses flew in the face of the overwhelming optimism for 2018’s prospects after a truly heroic year for markets in 2017. Indeed, January of 2018 saw markets having one...
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