The Best And Worst Performing Assets In April And YTD

In his latest review of monthly asset performance, DB’s Jim Reid writes that the month of April was for the most part a positive one for the bank’s sample of assets. For riskier assets in particular, April was however a bit of a tale of two halves. Escalating geopolitical concerns around Syria and North Korea combined with some unwinding of Trump reflation trades and the prospect of the French presidential elections towards the end of the month kept risk assets in check for much of April while measures of volatility (namely the VIX and VSTOXX) hit year to date highs.
However a market friendly French election result coupled with a strong start to earnings season on both sides of the pond helped risk assets stage a decent rally in the last week to finish with solid returns. Indeed overall, excluding currencies markets saw 29 of the 39 assets in the sample finish the month with a positive return in USD terms. A decent rally for both the Euro ( 2%) and Sterling ( 3%) meant that returns were generally more subdued for assets denominated outside of the US, however a similar amount of assets still ended the month with a positive total return.
In terms of the movers and shakers, at the top of the leaderboard the top 4 positions are dominated by equity markets in USD terms. Leading the way was Greece’s Athex ( 9%) helped by progress of the country’s preliminary agreement with creditors on fiscal reforms, followed then by European Banks ( 6%), IBEX ( 5%) and Stoxx 600 ( 4%). The DAX ( 3%) and FTSE MIB ( 3%) were not too far behind while the FTSE 100 ( 2%) also gained although was down -1% in local currency terms reflecting the bounce for Sterling following the announcement of a call for a general election in June. In the US the S&P 500 returned 1% for the month. EM equities were also 2%.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on May 2, 2017.