What a difference a month makes! During late April, complacency was widespread and the S&P 500 ended at a closing high. Now just five weeks later the focus for investors is assessment of downside risk as the S&P is now 2/3rds of the way to a 10% correction. Two concerns account for this reversal. First, trade, as Trump has now added skirmishes with Mexico & India to his fight with China. Second, there’s a growing realization that central banks may not be able to catalyze higher growth and inflation.
Another month and more record highs for North American stock indices. Throughout the month of April it began to feel as though nothing could take stocks down. Be it the barrage of headlines fuelling optimism towards U.S., China trade talks, U.S. Q1 earnings that were generally not as bad as feared (yes, ’not bad’ is the new good for stocks), and a steady stream of dovish rhetoric from central bankers. These variables combined to propel stocks back to the all-time highs seen last fall.
March 2019 was the third consecutive month of gains for North American equity indices, capping one of the strongest ever starts to a year. Of course this reversed one of the worst ever finishes to a year so if you were an index investor you could have taken the last half year off and saved yourself the stress. March also represented the third consecutive month of gains for our investors in each of our two long short equity hedge funds at Forge First, though during March we admittedly found ourselves at odds with the engine that was driving this rally. Our Long Short LP CL F Lead Series (“FFLSLP”) returned +0.49% net of fees while the Multi Strategy LP CL F Lead Series (“FFMSLP”) gained +0.37% post fees. Similar to the previous month positive drivers of this performance were generated from a wide range of industries to be discussed later.
February marked another positive month for the funds at Forge First Asset Management with the Forge First Long Short LP CL F Lead Series (“FFLSLP”) returning +2.34% net of fees and the Forge First Multi-Strategy Fund CL F Lead Series (“FFMSLP”) clocking in at +1.74% net. Not unlike January, the positive contributions came from a variety of exposures that we believe speak to our ability to build a diversified portfolio but stay within our knowledge base. To wit, our top five positive stock contributions came from four disparate sectors; gold mining, technology, industrials and energy.