All-In-1 Investment Bond and Guaranteed Capital Bond fund investment information

2022 was a difficult year for the fund as returns on both equities and bonds were negative. In investment markets, global equities were down 15.6% whilst global bonds fell 16.3%.

Performance over the year was driven by inflationary fears. Interest rates rose significantly over the year with the ten year Gilt Yield rising (meaning prices fell). Rising interest rates negatively impacts bond performance. Through this period whilst we held a reduced investment in government and corporate bonds we retained an allocation to provide resilience if a deep recessionary environment started to appear.

Within equities, energy was the only sector that was generally positive whilst the others were negative. Whilst we have some energy sector investments, they are limited. This has hampered performance over the year. We believe holding limited energy sector investments is appropriate given the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks over the medium term where oil and energy companies will face rising costs of capital compared to greener industries.

It has been a buoyant year for the US dollar which, at one point, was up 26.6% since the start of 2022. Within our investments, we intentionally hedge (a way of reducing the risk of loss due to currency value fluctuations) away some of our overseas currency investments including the US dollar. This has meant that we have missed out on the strong performance of the US Dollar over 2022. However, our strategic positioning is based on the medium term (three to five years) and longer (circa ten years) and over that period, even with the strong US Dollar in 2022, the US Dollar was broadly stable from 2016 to 2022.

A final source of underperformance was our reliance on quality growth stocks (like those in the technology sector), over value stocks (such as oil companies and banks). This appeared a poor decision over 2022 where value stocks have significantly outperformed growth stocks. However, as our time horizon is the medium and longer term, we believe that growth companies are likely to be more resilient as we move through a recessionary environment in 2023. These companies have strong products with good price control (where prices can increase without reducing volumes) and are likely to deliver performance that is more stable over the medium to long-term.