By the end of February, the price of one share of MF Compass Global Trends was BGN 1.1477, which is an increase of 2.42% for the month and 7.54% since the beginning of the year. For the same period, the leading indexes on shares also reported growth against the background of positive news, which restored the optimism of investors. The positive development of negotiations between the United States and China gave a push for a significant raise in the Chinese index on CSI 300 shares of 14.61% for the month. The continued stimulus of the Chinese government and the sparing US monetary policy has further supported the upward trend in global markets since the beginning of the year.
Among the best performing companies for the month in the portfolio of MF Compass Global Trends are: the Chinese platform for online car trading Autohome (+ 30.76% in BGN) and the Chinese company offering lessons for school-age children TAL Education (+ 15.45% in BGN), the German-based software company Nemetschek (+ 14.75% in BGN), and the US Square (+ 14.58% in BGN) operating in the field of digital payments, and Fortinet (+ 14.06% in BGN) offering products and network security services.
The balance sheet for the reporting season for the last quarter of 2018 shows that 70% of the companies in the broad US S&P 500 index have published higher-than-expected results. However, the main focus of investors was on forecasts for 2019. Pointing to rising wages and tariffs, more and more companies are giving conservative forecasts, which will create difficulties in maintaining the same levels of profits. The volatile environment in which market participants have operated over the last year reflects the increased geopolitical risks, on the one hand, and the phase of the economic cycle, on the other. As a result, at the end of 2018 we observed a significant decline in stock markets and in early 2019 a subsequent increase in an unusually short time. In this context, the selected companies in the portfolio of MF Compass Global Trends, although not fully immune to the general market sentiment but should perform better than the market average in the long run due to their solid foundation and unique competitive advantages. .
With respect,
The Compass Invest JSC team