Equity funds inflows soar fivefold during ISA season

Cumulative inflows during ISA season (15 February to 5 April, inclusive) hit £5.2bn, up from £981m the same time last year.  April marked the thirteenth highest inflows level in Calastone’s records and followed a record quarter for equity fund subscriptions, which reached £7bn in the first quarter of 2024. Interest in North American equities remained high, with net inflows reaching £1.2bn, the fourth-best month on record. Investor optimism also spread to global and European equities, which took in £1.5bn and £471m, respectively. Equity funds take majority of sustainable inflows in …

Kepler Partners’ Alan Ray: Reports of investment trusts’ demise are greatly exaggerated

One thing I have learned in my career is that the day you relax and walk into work thinking ‘I have got this’ is the day that things start to unravel. That is not at all meant to be a bleak assessment of the world of work, and it is equally important not to spend one’s career in a permanent state of paranoia. But a little bit of stress can be quite invigorating, no? The investment trust sector had its own ‘I have got this’ moment in 2022, when interest rates finally rose around the world and while the most obvious effect was felt in those trusts we loosely refer to as alternatives, eq…

Schroders places European Alpha Plus fund under review as underperformance lingers

In its assessment of value (AoV) report, the asset manager noted “disappointing” portfolio performance over the past year, influenced by stock selection and market-relative positioning dragging on performance. The biggest detractors to relative performance were small and mid-sized companies, with key underperforming stocks including Worldline, Hellofresh, DoBank and Ubisoft. Recession fears in Europe also resulted in “larger outflows than usual” from European equities. As such, the viability of the fund is currently under review and Schroders said it is in the process of “determining …

The Best-Performing ETFs of the Month

Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, are often low-cost instruments for investors to track popular indexes or leverage experienced manager choices in an attempt to beat the market. The best ones serve as building blocks for a portfolio, and unlike open-end funds, all ETFs are traded throughout the day on an exchange.

In April 2024, the top-performing ETFs included Turkey equity funds Amundi MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF (TUR) and iShares MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF (IDTK). Data in this article is sourced from Morningstar Direct.

To find the month’s best-performing ETFs, we screened those in Morningstar’s Equity, Allocation, or Fixed-Income categories that are available in the UK. We excluded exchange-traded notes, known as ETNs, and ETFs with less than $25 million (£20.0 million) in total assets. We also excluded funds that fall into Morningstar’s “trading” categories, as these funds are designed for active traders and are not suitable for long-term investors.

Within our list, two funds fell into the Turkey equity category, where the average fund rose 15.94% in April.

The 10 Best-Performing ETFs for April 2024

1. Amundi MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF (TUR)
2. iShares MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF (IDTK)
3. Global X Silver Miners UCITS ETF (SILV)
4. Global X Copper Miners UCITS ETF (COPX)
5. iShares Copper Miners UCITS ETF (COPM)
6. Market Access NYSE Arca Gold BUSIndex UCITS ETF (M9SD)
7. Invesco STOXX Europe 600 Optimised Basic Resources UCITS ETF (SC0W)
8. iShares STOXX Europe 600 Basic Resources UCITS ETF (DE) (EXV6)
9. Xtrackers FTSE China 50 UCITS ETF (XX2D)
10. iShares China Large Cap UCITS ETF (FXC)

Metrics for the Best-Performing ETFs

Amundi MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF

• Morningstar Rating: ★★
• Ongoing Charge: 0.45%
• Morningstar Category: Turkey Equity

The £57 million Amundi MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF was the best-performing ETF in April, with a 15.45% return. The passively managed Amundi ETF performed roughly in line with the 15.94% gain on the average fund in Morningstar’s Turkey equity category for the month. Over the last 12 months, the Amundi MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF has returned 46.21%, underperforming the 48.61% gain on the average fund in its category, leaving the ETF in the 50th percentile.

The Amundi MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF has a Morningstar Medalist Rating of Neutral. It was launched in March 2019.

iShares MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF

• Morningstar Rating: ★
• Ongoing Charge: 0.74%
• Morningstar Category: Turkey Equity

The second-best-performing ETF in April was the £93 million iShares MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF. The passively managed iShares ETF returned 15.20%, roughly

All About the Outcomes

Measuring the impacts of stewardship is far from simple, even as technological innovation begins to smooth the way. 

When it comes to driving sustainability-related performance at portfolio companies, stewardship is one of the most effective tools currently at investors’ disposal. 

As evidenced during ESG Investor’s Stewardship Summit last month, asset owners are increasingly focused on the outcomes of high-quality engagement – as opposed to the number of engagements undertaken each year. 

“Asset owners are increasingly attuned to the fact that financially material risks linked to system-level issues – such as climate change, biodiversity collapse or social instability – are largely undiversifiable,” Clara Melot, Stewardship Specialist at the UN-convened Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), tells ESG Investor. “As fiduciaries, they may have a legal obligation to consider what they can do to mitigate risks and act accordingly – this is where outcomes-focused stewardship comes into play.” 

If an investor has engaged with a carbon-intensive company on its climate-related ambition, a positive outcome may be that it sets decarbonisation targets to include Scope 3 emissions, or that it develops and publishes a transition plan aligned with the UK-based Transition Plan Taskforce’s guidance.  

In contrast, a negative outcome may be that the company refuses to raise its ambition, or ditches climate solutions funding altogether.  

The importance of measuring and disclosing such outcomes is also coming into sharper focus thanks to an increase in frameworks, codes and regulations requiring investors to provide robust disclosures on their stewardship activities with portfolio companies.  

However, despite emerging technology-driven tools designed to streamline the engagement process, measuring the effectiveness of stewardship outcomes remains challenging for asset owners and asset managers for a plethora of reasons – such as a lack of standardised metrics, accurate attribution, limited visibility, to name but a few. 

“Asset owners have always been keen to take an outcomes- and materiality-focused approach to stewardship as part of their fiduciary duties,” notes Caroline Escott, Senior Investment Manager for Active Ownership at UK pension fund Railpen. “This approach is fundamental to help asset owners make the most of a finite level of stewardship resource and ensure they push managers on the critical issues that matter most to

FCA fines and bans ex-Shard Capital CEO from working in financial services

The UK’s financial regulator also fined Lewis with £120,300. The fine was reduced from £171,900 after Lewis agreed to cooperate during the investigation, and therefore qualified for a 30% reduction of the penalty. In the first instance, Lewis told auditors that between 2015 and 2017, Shard Capital, which he founded in 2010, held hundreds of millions in cash for a particular client. FCA’s Sacha Sadan: SDR will help bring ‘trust and integrity’ back to the sector However in reality, the sum represented debt owed by one of the client’s connected companies to the other. In the second…

WisdomTree’s largest shareholder returns with fresh attempt opposing CEO

In a letter to shareholders on Monday (6 May), Graham Tuckwell, chair of ETFS Capital, which holds around an 18% stake in WisdomTree, asked investors to vote against the re-election of Steinberg and two other board members at the firm’s annual meeting on 12 June.  Laying out its own letter in response, WisdomTree asked shareholders to ignore the activist’s callout, calling Tuckwell’s latest move “against three of WisdomTree’s directors – his third attempt against the board in the past three years – that is a waste of time and resources and not in the best interests of the company and all…

WisdomTree’s largest shareholder returns with fresh attempt to oust CEO

In a letter to shareholders on Monday (6 May), Graham Tuckwell, chair of ETFS Capital, which holds around an 18% stake in WisdomTree, asked investors to vote against the re-election of Steinberg and two other board members at the firm’s annual meeting on 12 June.  Laying out its own letter in response, WisdomTree asked shareholders to ignore the activist’s callout, calling Tuckwell’s latest move “against three of WisdomTree’s directors – his third attempt against the board in the past three years – that is a waste of time and resources and not in the best interests of the company and all…

Former Credit Suisse CFO Dixit Joshi joins Man Group board

Dixit spent less than a year at Credit Suisse, joining in October 2022 from Deutsche Bank, where he had worked since 2010. At the German bank, he held a wide range of senior roles including group treasurer, head of the fixed income institutional client group, global head of prime finance and EMEA and APAC equities head. In a stock exchange notice today (8 May), Man Group said he will join the audit and risk committee and nomination and governance committees on 10 May. The future of AT1 bonds one year on from the collapse of Credit Suisse Chair Anne Wade said she was “delighted” to …

Hargreaves Lansdown removes Richard Ford fund from Wealth Shortlist following retirement

Ford currently serves as the group’s co-head of the Broad Markets Fixed Income team, as well as manager on several portfolios. He is retiring from the business after 33 years, effective from 31 August. Morgan Stanley confirmed to HL that there would be “no changes made to the investment process of philosophy of the fund” following Ford’s departure, and that no other team exits are expected in the near future. Hargreaves Lansdown triples number of new clients in three months But despite this reassurance, Hal Cook, senior investment analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the firm’s “co…