March, 2023
The Robeco Emerging Conservative Equities Fund (AUD) – Class A (the ‘Fund’) returned 6.13% (net) for the quarter, outperforming the MSCI Emerging Markets NR Index (AUD unhedged) return of 5.31% by 0.82%. The strategy also outperformed the Minimum Volatility Index.
Generic low-risk strategies lagged in the market upswing due to their defensive positioning. However, the Fund managed to outperform due to its preference for defensive stocks with attractive valuations and income levels. This was particularly driven by the portfolio’s preference for high income (high dividend) low-risk stocks, while the contribution from momentum was less pronounced.
File: https://commentary.quantreports.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Robeco-EC-A-Quarterly-Report.pdfJuly, 2022
The fund lagged a bullish equity market due to the bias towards defensive sectors such as health care, telecom and insurance stocks, while having an underweight in tech and platform stocks such as Amazon, Tesla and Apple. Positive contributions mainly came from holding gas station operator Murphy USA and from US industrial W.W. Grainer, as both stocks surged on 2Q earnings and positive forward guidance. From a factor perspective, value and low-risk lagged in the cyclical growth rally.
File: https://commentary.quantreports.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/docu-factsheet-robeco-global-dm-conservative-equities-fund-aud-hedged-5.pdfJune, 2022
The Fund lost less than the index due to our defensive positioning in most sectors. Positive individual stock contributes were numeruous and well-balance. For example,holding abbive, General Milles,Merck And Co Verizon and Autozone helped performance,showing positive.or flat returns in a failing market. From a factor perspective low-risk had a significantly positive impact,while the combined contribution of value and momentum was highly positive as wel.l
File: https://commentary.quantreports.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/docu-factsheet-robeco-global-dm-conservative-equities-fund-aud-hedged-4.pdfApril, 2022
The strategy performed significantly better than the market in last month's volatile market environment. Positive contributors were numerous, such avoiding the weak performance of Amazon NVIDIA and Tesla, and holding low-risk namers such as Merck & Co Target Murphy USA, P&G, Nestle and Waste Management. Detractors were limited,main drag on performance was the underweight
File: https://commentary.quantreports.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/docu-factsheet-robeco-global-dm-conservative-equities-fund-aud-hedged-3.pdfSeptember, 2021
The strategy fell in line with the market last month. Main positive contributions came from the Communication Services sector: the fund profited from holding defensive stocks such as KDDI (Japan), while avoiding the weak performance of Facebook and Alphabet. Main detractors were the underweight in the Energy sector, as oil prices rose, and the investment in Australian mining company Fortescue, as iron ore prices collapsed. From a factor perspective, low-risk and momentum contributed negatively, but the value factor had a positive impact on relative performance.
File: https://commentary.quantreports.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/docu-factsheet-robeco-global-dm-conservative-equities-fund-aud-hedged-2.pdfMay, 2021
The strategy outperformed the market last month, as stock selection within most sectors, most notably Consumer Discretionary ( holding Targett while avoiding Amazon and Tesla ) and information Technology ( holding Oracle and Cisco while avoiding Mastercard and Visa ) Defensive value stocks clearly outperformed cyclical growth stocks.
From a factor perspective, value has the largest, and positive, impact while low-risk and momentum were slighthly negative
File: https://commentary.quantreports.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/docu-factsheet-robeco-global-dm-conservative-equities-fund-aud-hedged-1.pdfMarch, 2021
The strategy beat the market by a significant margin last month, as the low-risk factor was strong, as was the value factor, which explains why we beat MSCI MinVol as well. Main positive contributors came from holding low-beta technology and consumer stocks such as Oracle, Cisco, Home Depot, Target and AutoZone, which offer decent growth rates but at more attractive valuations than Big Tech and the high-flying internet stocks. As a cyclical recovery seems to be priced in and as the fastest-growing internet and tech stocks are trading at demanding valuations, we think it is time for defensive stocks to take center stage again, especially in more volatile periods.
File: https://commentary.quantreports.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/docu-factsheet-robeco-global-dm-conservative-equities-fund-aud-hedged.pdfasset_class:
asset_category:
peer_benchmark:
broad_market_index:
manager_contact_details: Array
ticker: ETL1206AU
release_schedule: Monthly
structure: Managed Fund
commentary_block: Array
factsheet_url:
https://ironbarkam.com/funds/robeco-emerging-conservative-equity-fund-aud-class-a/
fund_features:
Robeco Global DM Conservative Equities AUD Hedged aims to deliver equity returns at a substantial lower downside risk than that of the MSCI World Index net dividends reinvested, in AUD Hedged (‘Reference Index’). The portfolio aims to achieve the highest long-term Sharpe ratio (the average return earned in excess of the risk-free rate per unit of volatility or total risk), delivering returns equal to or greater than its Reference Index over a full market cycle.
- The investment strategy of the Fund seeks to capture the low risk anomaly described as follows.
- Analysis by Robeco has shown that low-risk stocks (in terms of volatility and beta) are able to generate returns equal to, or greater than, the market with lower associated risks.
- The beta of a stock or portfolio is a number describing the correlated volatility of an asset in relation to the volatility of the benchmark that the asset is being compared to.