March brings to an end the first quarter of 2020 – a challenging period
for everyone and every industry. The GBI – Good Governance Fund
showed exceptional relative performance, losing 7.03% in March versus
a loss of 12.35% for the S&P500 TR index. This represents a remarkable
outperformance over the index of 5.32% in March and 8.49% year to
date. The accumulated outperformance since the inception of the fund
on February 20, 2019 now stands at 11.82%.
In terms of sector allocation, it was the underweighting to the Industrial,
Energy and Financial sectors that contributed the most to the month’s
relative gains over the index. An overweight allocation to Consumer
Staples and Information Technology also had a positive impact. The only
notable detractor was the underweighting to the Healthcare sector.
In this difficult environment, it is worth noting that a significant part of
the performance came from stock picking. Some of the fund’s largest
positions were positive in March: Amazon, Netflix, Walmart and Eli Lilly.
Within the S&P 500, around thirty companies lost more than half their
market cap during the month, of which the fund held only three:
Nordstrom, Gap and Kohl.