Inflation outperforms mutual funds again

The mutual funds part of the National Union of Collective Placement Bodies (UNOPC) have once again failed to keep up with inflation in the first month of this year. Their shares went up 1.1% on the average, whereas inflation reached 1.3%.
Analysts say the lower performance of the funds is mainly due to the faster price increases in the winter months and expect to see fund shares outrun inflation by March. This situation – performance below inflation is similar to the one in the last few months of last year.
The ROL lost 2.2% against the euro during the same period and gained 1.1% against the dollar.
The fund shares over the last few months have gone up 23.7% on the average, as compared with the inflationary rate that reached 16.7%. Also during this period, the amounts managed by funds went up more than three times in real terms, reaching $30 million by the end of last month.
UNOPC data show the number of investors to have dropped 11.4% to 49,251 in January, while the net assets of the member funds fell 3.4%.
Low-risk investments are still the investment funds’ favourites, as most of the funds’ assets are in form of T-bills. The funds with a higher appetite for risk are also the ones to have registered the highest yields. The shares of Napoca, managed by Globinvest went up 7.2% in January, while those in Intercapital, managed by Certinvest, rose 3.1%.
Both funds invest approximately two thirds of their assets in listed securities. The BET index of the top ten companies listed on the Stock Exchange gained 4.2% in January. The Stock Exchange decline in February is expected to impact on the performance of the two funds’ shares.
The funds specialising in the money market registered 2.1% increase in the case of Globinvest-managed Transilvania and 1.0% for BRD Asset Management’s Simfonia 1.