Funds investing on BSE return to profit in April

Mutual funds with placements in equity reverted back to deriving positive yields in April, after their performances had been hit in March by corrections on the Stock Exchange.

With few exceptions, mutual funds with placements on the Stock Exchange in April witnessed slight advances. The improvement was sustained by the progression of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, which stabilised following significant corrections of March. However, these gains are far from the high yields witnessed in January.

The yields of the funds investing mainly in shares witnessed an increase ranging between 0.7% and 1.7%, with only two funds posting declines in April. In March, they had seen decreases by as much as 4%. Diversified funds, placing up to 50% of assets in equity, registered similar increases.

The progression of mutual funds reflects the weak stock exchange activity, with the indices registering insignificant variations last month. Thus, the BET index, tracking the progress of the top ten listed companies, excluding the SIFs, rose by 0.7 percent, while the SIFs index, the BET-FI, advanced by 2.3%. A slightly bigger advance, by 2.6 percent, was registered by the BET-C index, comprising smaller companies, which saw more solid increases last month.

BT Maxim, managed by BT Asset Management, the investment management company of Banca Transilvania, boasted the best performance, an increase by 1.66%. Omninvest, managed by SIRA, ranked second, with a 1.3% increase, followed by Napoca, managed by Globinvest, with a yield of close to 1 percent.

Fondul Oportunitati Nationale (FON), managed by Vanguard Asset Management, had the best yield since the beginning of the year on its segment, with a 5.6% increase.

Among diversified funds, BT Classic, the other fund of Banca Transilvania, offered the highest yield in April, with a 1.8% rise. Transilvania, the diversified fund managed by Globinvest followed, with a 1.7% advance. Transilvania has yielded 5.65% since the beginning of the year, and in late April it came out on top of the mutual funds ranking.

Funds mainly investing in bonds and monetary market instruments are still offering modest yields to investors, with increases ranging between 0.3 and 0.6% in April. However, Orizont and Europa Obligatiuni are the exceptions.