Asset Allocation & Fund Positioning, Copley Fund Research

Steven Holden

Steven Holden is the CEO and Founder of Copley Fund Research, an independent provider of research on equity fund positioning and performance.  Set up in 2014, Copley focuses on global, global emerging market, US, Asia Ex-Japan and China active equity funds, covering over $4tr in assets across 1300 active managers.  The company provides data and analysis on market trends, manager exposures and active fund performance to an audience of investment managers, pension funds and fund selectors worldwide.  Mr Holden’s 14-year investment banking career started in 2000, where he worked for Morgan Stanley as an equity derivative trader focused on emerging markets in London.  Following this, he spent 4 years at Citibank in London and Hong Kong as an Executive Director in derivative sales, focused again on emerging markets.

Asset Allocation & Fund Positioning

Banks – Recovery Data Is Real, Valuable

Copley Fund Research

Copley Fund Research provide research and data on asset allocation among Global and Emerging Market equity funds.  The analysis details absolute and relative positioning across countries, sectors and industries together with highly granular data on single stock and single fund allocations.  The data is updated monthly with time series going back to January 2011.

Global Research - Analysis of 165 prominent Global equity funds, combined AUM $335bn
GEM Research - Analysis of 127 prominent global EM equity funds, combined AUM $250bn

Asset Allocation - Global and GEM Equity

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

United states Financials / Thematic (Sector/Industry)

US Financial stocks are a key holding for Global active managers.  Average weights stand at 6.38% among the 383 Global funds in our analysis, the 3rd largest global country/sector allocation.After a heavy sell of during the first few months of COVID-19, allocations bottomed out in August 2020 and turned sharply to the upside.  US Financials captured some of the largest ownership increases among global country/sector peers, moving from underweight to overweight in the process.<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/morgan-stanley" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:1122:1" rel="noopener">Morgan Stanley (MS US)</a> has broken out to new highs in active fund ownership, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/jpmorgan-chase-co" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:277:1" rel="noopener">JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co (JPM US)</a> is the most widely held Financial stock, whilst <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/citigroup-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:279:1" rel="noopener">Citigroup Inc (C US)</a> exposure remains subdued.There are few signs of confidence levels abating or that managers are overly exposed to the sector, either on an absolute basis or relative to benchmark.  Therefore, we see it as low risk that managers will look to scale back exposure at this juncture.

US Financial stocks are a key holding for Global active managers.  Average weights stand at 6.38% among the 383 Global funds in our analysis, the 3rd largest global country/sector allocation.After a heavy sell of during the first few months of COVID-19, allocations bottomed out in August 2020 and turned sharply to the upside.  US Financials captured some of the largest ownership increases among global country/sector peers, moving from underweight to overweight in the process.Morgan Stanley (MS US) has broken out to new highs in active fund ownership, JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co (JPM US) is the most widely held Financial stock, whilst Citigroup Inc (C US) exposure remains subdued.There are few signs of confidence levels abating or that managers are overly exposed to the sector, either on an absolute basis or relative to benchmark.  Therefore, we see it as low risk that managers will look to scale back exposure at this juncture.

US Financials: Back in Vogue