Report: Q2 2026 Market & Fund Performance

Courtiers' Multi-Asset Fund range sees positive returns for the sixth quarter in a row. Plus the rise of China, emerging markets, and the importance of sticking to solid investment principles while avoiding adapting to market shifts.

Issued by Courtiers Asset Management Limited, CAM0726104. Courtiers Asset Management Limited is Authorised and Regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority – Register No: 616322. Address: 18 Hart Street, Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire RG9 2AU. Tel: 01491 578368.

Important information

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns. The value of investments, and the income from them, can go down as well as up and is not guaranteed and you may not get back the amount originally invested. Any forecast, projection or target where provided is indicate only and is not guaranteed in any way. Certain types of funds might carry a greater investment risk than other investment funds. Further details of the risks are associated with investing in Courtiers funds can be found in the Key Investor Information Document or Prospectus, copies of which are available on request or at www.courtiers.co.uk.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

I'm here with Asset Management Director Jake Reynolds and head of asset management James Timberson to talk about what's been happening in the Courtiers Funds and in markets around the globe between April and June. James, if we can start with you. We're looking at some big numbers and quite a big streak. What can you tell us about the Courties Fund?

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Yeah, so I've got a happy face on for this one because it's been another really good quarter. The Cautious Fund is up 7.5%, Band Fund up 9.6%, and the growth running is up 11.8% this quarter. And this actually marks the sixth quarter in a row where all three of the funds have had positive returns. When was the last time that happened? It happened last back in 2012, 2013. Now obviously you do get a bit of timing, things go in your favour. So last year we had the TARF crash, but that happened right at the start of the quarter. So there's time for the markets to recover by the end of the quarter. And even this year, when we saw the Middle East conflict crash, that happened at the end of what had otherwise been a really strong quarter. So that was still positive. But having said all that, um, it has overall been a really strong period because in those six quarters, the Growth Front has returned to nearly 34%, banned 26%, the cautious 19%. So it's been a really, really good time to be invested in these funds.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

So we're talking about six quarters of positive returns in a row. To put that into context, that's one and a half years of positive returns. Jake, what's been driving these positive returns over the last quarter?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

So um it's not just absolute performance that's that's really good, it's relative performance as well. Like we don't look at the competition. You know, we were on camera uh a month ago talking about the 10-year award or the growth fund, but and that's like ranking us against other fund managers. You we need to focus on our clients' objectives and building a portfolio that's right for their goals. So that's what we're focused on. But when you do that, we'll be with you know, we always say that prudent being prudent pays, and and that and that's what we do when we build up these portfolios that are diversified and try to steer clear of big risks. Um, so the relative performance is really good. The reason relative performance is is really good is that a lot of people have just been going with the flows of exactly the big stories that are uh around really at the moment, which is by the Mag 7, by US Tech, and that's been really struggling. Um, where we have been vested more is smaller companies, value companies. We like to find companies with good fundamentals, um, and they've done really well this year. Uh, obviously, with they're more domestically focused and more interest rate sensitive. Um, so when uh the conflict between Iran and um US kicked off, uh, there was a little bit of give back. This stuff did really well in the first couple of months of this year, but we've got that back now, particularly in June. Um, so smaller companies have been doing really well. Rates are expected to, we're still expecting, taking the UK as an example, we're still expecting one rate hike this year because inflation expectations have risen because oil rose. It's now come back down, but there's still high gas prices. Um, so when you have lower interest rate uh expectations, domestic focus stuff does do better. So small cap value, but EM portfolio has been amazing. So these Mag 7 have been struggling because the Magnificent Seven, they so now as people are calling them hydroscalers because it's other companies, and now they have these huge capital expenditure budgets, spending billions and billions of dollars on data centers. People are a bit concerned about that. Um, so that's why they're not performing as well, um, even even despite all the excitement of AI. But this is spilled over. So um people are noticing that all the picks and shovel plays, and they're called picks and shovel plays because in the gold rush in California, it wasn't the miners that performed well, it was the people manufacturing the picks and the shovels to manufacture to be bought by people that were part of the gold rush. So the picks and shovel plays we've been really well exposed to because these are companies that just doing normal stuff that people need. So Samsung, I don't think it made it well, I think we wrote about it last quarter, but I don't think it made the video. But it had three quarters where it was up nearly 40%. But the last quarter, Q2 2026, it's done 99%, and this is because it makes uh memory and Lenovo, um, another part of our EM exposure, emerging market exposure, sorry, um, is um making servers. Uh so they put all the bits together from NVIDIA and and Intel and Samsung, and it all goes into a big server stack. Lenovo made that, and so they're up 150% this quarter. So these things have really driven the portfolio forward. Um, and then lastly, um, this is a bit of a sugar rush because we're kind of sad to see it go because it was paying a huge dividend. But um, we mentioned that renewables were really good last quarter because obviously oil prices had come up, but the wind was blowing and the sun was shining, so renewables were producing a lot. We had exposure, uh, we have Bluefield Solar Income Fund. Um, and um that's actually been bought out by Drax, um, the power manufacturer. So that's up about 42% this year. Um, sad to see it go because then we've got to find something else. But um, you know, it's good to get 42% return.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Well, it's always nice to talk about what's doing well, especially when you guys are positive over six whole quarters. There's a lot doing well. What about what's not doing so well?

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Well, yeah, I guess you know, we talk about oil being up 94% last quarter, it's now down 38%. Um, so that's back down to the level that uh actually we saw at the end of February before the conflict started, uh, which is really interesting because the straight up or moves that kept all this of being blocked isn't fully operational yet. Um, it's still uh there are some ships coming through, um, but uh even though we're nowhere near to the um eight, there was a blip where we thought it was opening up and then went back down again. So um it but despite that, oil has you know, we talked about human ingenuity and people pivot really quickly. So A Saudi producing more, um, and that's brought the oil price back down. But it's not good news across the board because states like Qatar, the uh big gas exporters, they're really dependent on Australia for moves. They have no workaround. So gas prices are still quite high, and therefore you get energy prices. Countries like Germany will have high energy prices. So, what's done badly? Oil means that our energy stocks, particularly a couple in the global fund, haven't done as well. So they held back. I think global fund was still up nearly 6%, but not as much as the other funds that were benefiting from that smaller cap exposure and interest rate um coming down in exposure. So um, those all the sorts didn't do as well. Those interest rate effects have not led to the consumer's pocket yet because like energy product prices are uh still quite elevated. So consumer discretionary stocks. So that's companies that make discretionary purchases. The stuff that would fall into that is like house builders or car manufacturers, they're big ticket items that you need to feel really confident about the economy before you take on that dare and you go and buy and purchase that. So actually, like um we have Stellantus, which is Peugeot, Citron, Alpha Romeo, um, and Mercedes, and then some house golders. We've got big pocket of UK house builders as well. I think you know there's a massive housing deficit. Gary talked about um, I think last month on the video. So we we we are they're also incredibly good value, um, and they've got amazing balance sheets. It's not the same as when this or we're going into the 2007, 2008, where the the where these companies were a lot more leveraged, they're completely deleveraged, healthy balance sheets, and we need more um housing.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

So we've seen this steady rise since the 90s of China as a percentage of global token GDP, and that has increased massively. You can't ignore it anymore. James, talk to us about China.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yeah, so China historically is a region where we haven't been and heavily invested at all, um, partly because of a lot of um investor restrictions and how state-controlled it is. Um and Lenovo, which we mentioned, uh, was our only uh direct exposure at all until recently. And even then, we only invested in Lenovo because it came up on our short list, and it's listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, so it's very easy to trade. Um but in the last quarter, um, we've sort of paid a bit more attention to China. Its share of global GDP has absolutely uh ballooned in the last couple of decades. It was one or two percent in the early 90s, now it's nearly 20%. So now not in being invested in China is a much more of an active position and having some exposure to it. So what we've done is we've um we've dipped our talent, we've invested in the Hang Sang index. The advantage of that is it trades very liquid features. Uh, we already trade a lot in features, so there's very little to no setup required. Um so we dipped on time to the trade's market with this Hang Seng index. Company makes up 2% of the growth fund, one and a half percent of balanced and one percent of cautious. Um, and we're also looking to build on it by looking at direct stocks, which a bit like Mamovo won't be um directly traded in the Chinese stock market because of all the values to entry there, it'll be listed in Hong Kong, which is much easier to access.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

So I'd like to ask you both you know, how important is it that you stick to your investment principles as opposed to trying to adapt to all market shits?

SPEAKER_01 10:11

So much of what we do is really simple, it's really simple, it's just not easy to do. And that is yeah, and I think is it people are gonna cringe at this, but it's having the best clients in the world because I know it's but it is because we are allowed. 2023 was not good for us, but everyone struck with us because they know, and you have been rewarded so richly since then, because uh, in that period, you've got interest rates going up, equity markets not doing as well, these mag 7 stops uh that there's a lot of retail investors going into. Um, people are saying, Oh, I'm making this, what's your Cordia's fund doing? Um, but you know those periods will will come, so you have to stick to your process because the process is based on hundreds of years of evidence on how markets behave and how humans behave and doesn't change. Oh, but it'll still be a human at the end of the end of making the decision. What's the you know, it's it ultimately it's it's avoiding the get which quick schemes and and churning out good returns year on year and and doing it with discipline because the get which quick schemes make you get poor quick um eventually, and so you just got to build a diverse portfolio, have the margin of safety with evaluation, and just keep keep churning it out and grinding it out day every day, really.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

The funds are they're nearly 20 years old now, and the core risk analysis that goes on behind the scenes that hasn't changed at all. You know, the basic calculations that we use in our what we call it mean variance analysis, um, that hasn't changed. We still use that parade, we still look at the fund betas, we call them every month. They're there a risk rating of the funds, they measure the risk of the fund relative to the market, and all the maths that go behind that hasn't changed because it works. Um here we are nearly about to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the funds, and they've all got really good track records line.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Well, that's a great note to end on. Both of you, thank you very much, James, for your time, Jake for your time. If you do have any questions, please, as ever, contact your advisor or contact us through the website. Thank you.