COMPASS RFPs: Sovereign Wealth Funds Went Back to Active Equity Searches in 2020
Posted on 02/23/2021
SWFI Global Asset Owner Terminal (SWFI.com) has a widely-used service called Compass which tracks RFPs, informal searches, and business leads from asset owners such as sovereign wealth funds, pensions, endowments, and other institutional investors. For the main category of “Active Equities”, for 2020, the dollar amount of opportunities totaled US$ 156,420,129,700 versus US$ 63,912,018,350 in 2019 and US$ 127,541,519,166 in 2018. Some large sovereign wealth funds rejigged their internal investment teams before COVID infected the world economy. Compass opportunities and RFPs that were tagged value equities and growth equities were about the same in 2020. Active U.S. Equities were in higher demand versus Active Global Equities by about US$ 56 billion in 2020. SWFI can postulate that sovereign wealth funds and large pensions anticipated economic recovery in 2020 and highly accommod
DIRECT EQUITY: Large Public Pensions Went GAGA for Apple Stock in 2020
Posted on 12/23/2020
According to SWFI transaction data, large public pensions and sovereign wealth funds directly invested over US$ 17.7 billion into Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) versus roughly US$ 2.105 billion. SWFI cannot capture every public pension fund’s listed equity transactions, but the amount is a sample that has been collected through various time periods. A sample of the public pensions include CalPERS, CalSTRS, CPP Investments, and PSP Investments.
As of December 23, 2020, Apple Inc. has a market capitalization of US$ 2.24 trillion. According to the SWFI Global Asset Owner Survey, for each quarter in 2020, respondents viewed “U.S. Long Technologies Equities” as the most crowded trade. The quarterly investor survey polls sovereign wealth funds, pensions, endowments, and other asset owners (non-fund managers).
FINANCIAL STABILITY: Sovereign Investors Calmer on Pandemic Risk vs. Geopolitical Risks
Posted on 12/22/2020
According to the latest SWFI Global Asset Owner Survey that was released in December 2020, the majority of respondents see geopolitical risk as the most potential risk toward financial market stability, supplanting viral pandemic risk. Prolonged low oil prices can stoke greater regional conflicts in both the Middle East and the Eastern European front. The viral pandemic risk and credit default risk options received an equal number of answers. The positivity of vaccine efficacy and distribution news seemed to calm long-term investors. COVID-19 has led economies to their deepest recessions and quickest recoveries. However, recent news of viral mutations in the coronavirus in Europe, could cause greater short-term impacts on companies year-end figures. With major central banks engaged in unprecedented stimulus, interest rate risk from respondents dropped this quarter. The Decem