September 2024: Macro figures often guide
Investors in the Sustainable Dividends Value Fund achieved a modest return of 0.3% last month. Since the beginning of the year, our fund’s performance is now 9.9%. In a month without too much corporate news, macro figures tend to provide direction. More specifically, it was the interest rate cuts announced by the European and US central banks that caused turmoil in the markets. The fear of a too late and too slow intervention by central bankers was the reason why most European equity markets went negative for the month, and the MSCI Europe index ended up posting -0.4%. The small cap index actually ended September 0.5% higher. Small and mid-caps have lagged sharply behind the stock market in recent years. The prospect of a further fall in interest rates in the coming quarters has investors looking for lagging and sometimes severely undervalued stocks. Our small and mid-caps are good examples of this. The valuation of our portfolio is considerably lower than that of the market, and we expect to benefit from this in the coming period. Since its launch in 2016, the return on our fund is now over 72%.
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The fund
Sustainable Dividends offers an investment fund that invests in a well-diversified portfolio of European companies at the forefront of the sustainability transition. Our focus is on a disciplined investment process, while applying both qualitative and quantitative financial criteria.