Concentrated Global Equity Fund Q2 Update

Taking a look at the second quarter of 2025, our Concentrated Global Equity Strategy performed in line with the index around 6%.

When we look at what drove returns, it was very much a risk on market off the lows we saw in early April from Liberation Day. A part of our portfolio exposed to AI and the definitive resumed optimism in that segment of the market really helped our performance.

But it was also some broader stock picking that contributed, such as Sartorius, which is a German life sciences company tied to all the exciting innovation happening in bioprocessing and biologic drugs.

It was also SOC Gen, Societe Generale, a French bank, very much in line with our theme that there are some segments of Europe aligned to greater fiscal spending or deregulation that will help returns.

When we look at segments that didn't help us, there was one standout stock.

Our underweight to NVIDIA really hurt returns when it comes to that stock being up more than 40%.

However, we do own very closely aligned companies such as TSMC, such as Broadcom that helped us offset that negative return.

All in all, as I said, delivering a return of 6% in line with the index.

As we think about the backdrop from here, we lean more optimistic.

There are definitive changes and positive developments when it comes to US policy.

But what we're seeing is through the shock and uncertainty from Liberation Day, we're getting evidence that the underlying health of the US economy remains quite strong and resilient.

We believe that provides a greater floor to the market and the market is biased to be positive and to the upside from here.

There were a couple of changes though we made in the quarter and some of the volatility gave us the opportunity to do that.

One key change was a reduction in our healthcare positioning.

Long term, we're optimistic on healthcare, but in the near term, they are on the wrong side of the US administration, facing numerous headwinds such as government budget cuts and R&D spending cuts as well as pressures we're seeing now on drug pricing.

So for this point in time, we are on the side of reducing our positioning as healthcare has not been as defensive.

Another change and also insight is while the economy is strong, we're seeing a really strong distinction between the real physical capital side of the economy such as industrials and industrial spending.

And on the other side, the digital part of the economy remains much stronger.

So we have reduced some of our exposure to industrial production and further increased our exposure to more digital assets and even some of the AI stocks as we did get anecdotes during the quarter that the AI thematic remains very, very strong and CapEx and investment is more resilient than we expected.

All in all though, we remain balanced, diversified but positioned and leaning more optimistic and we think that the market as I mentioned has more positive upside ahead from here.