BSE growth prompts equity funds rebound in July

The rebound of the Bucharest Stock Exchange in July has helped stock-investing mutual funds to offset a large part of their losses from the previous months and get close to the levels recorded at the beginning of the year.
The significant growth of the SIF and Rompetrol Rafinare (Petromidia) stock mainly led to positive yields of the diversified and equity funds, after two months of significant declines.
The equity funds posted yields between 0.7% and 14.6% in July, with growth averaging about 7.4%. In case of diversified funds, the yields ranged between 2.1% and 9.1%, with average performance exceeding 5.2%.
The BET-FI index, which gauges the performance of the SIFs, posted 15% increase in July, while the BET index progressed by 9.1%.
Even higher growth was that of Rompetrol Rafinare, which gained about 23% last month. The significant differences in the yields of the equity funds were due to the strategies used by the managers of these funds. Therefore some managers bet on a rebound of the capital market as early as the end of June, maximising their investments in stocks and therefore fully benefiting from the growth on the Bucharest Stock Exchange in the first few days of July.
Top fund in terms of yield last month was Active Dinamic, managed by Swiss Capital Asset Management, with an increase in the fund unit by 14.6%, followed by Napoca, managed by Globinvest, with an over 12.9% yield. The strong growth is explained by the fact that Active Dinamic’s portfolio was 91.5% composed of listed shares at the end of June, according to the data of the National Union of Collective Placement Bodies (UNOPC), while Napoca’s exposure on the capital market stood at nearly 80%.
“The high exposure we have on the capital market helped us take full advantage of the Stock Exchange increase,” Stefan Racoceanu, chairman of Swiss Capital Asset Management. He believes mutual funds that invest in shares will continue their recovery in the near future and will conclude the year with positive yields.
“Given that the stock market has reverted to an upward trend, we can estimate a rebound of the fund industry. Under the circumstances, the appreciation of the value of the assets of equity funds can be an additional element to attract new investors,” Racoceanu said.
Most fund managers forecast new increases on the Stock Exchange in the coming months, betting mainly on the financial-banking and petroleum companies.
“I believe share prices will continue to rebound to levels close to those from which they started to go down. I believe the SIFs remain greatly undervalued and implicitly have a high growth potential,” says Walter Blaj, deputy general manager of Globinvest.
Out of the diversified funds, the highest yield was that of Bancpost Active Balanced, with a growth of 91.2%.
Bancpost Active had a nearly 50% exposure to shares listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange at the end of June.