After attempting a valeant, pardon the poor pun, Leap Day surge to close green for the month, a bout of late day selling resulted in the S&P500 closing just red for the month following a dramatically turbulent January, a continuation of the disappointing post Fed hike price action; indeed as noted earlier for global equities, February was the 4th consecutive month in which stocks declined and in many cases continued their presence in bear market territory.
So while many assets failed to work, some did. Below we present the full breakdown of the best and worst performing assets of both February and 2016 YTD in local currency terms and in USD terms.
Here is DB's Jim Reid with the full breakdown:
Having been through one of the worst Januarys in the post-Lehman era, February offered some stability in selected asset classes although for most parts risky assets in DM are still down on the month. Oil was largely flat in February and has been mostly trading inside the $30-$35/bbl range for the past month. That perhaps gave the EM complex some breathing space with the likes of Bovespa and EM bonds actually up on the month. Against the backdrop of lower DM equities, February was again another positive month for core rates whilst credit total returns were mostly flat to small down with weakness led by higher-beta parts of the market. Net net year to date performances are still negative for most key risk benchmarks while core rates and precious metals are some of the standout performers to date.
Taking a closer look at the month and starting with equities, the DAX and Stoxx 600 were 2-3% lower on a total returns basis whereas the S&P 500 finished the month basically unchanged. In EM, the MSCI EM equity benchmark is also flat on the month. Chinese equities was down almost 2% in February (after a late month reversal) which was still relatively speaking a much better showing versus the 23% decline in January.
The Shanghai Composite remains one of the biggest YTD underperformer in our selected sample of global asset classes.
In terms of fixed income, Treasuries, Gilts and Bunds were up around 1.0-1.5% in Feb which takes their total returns to date to low-to-mid single digits. Impressive given the low starting yield. Credit performance is somewhat more mixed but generally total returns for higher quality segments benefitted from the rates rally.
In Commodities Gold (+11%), Sugar (+11%) and Silver (+5%) were the top performers. In currencies JPY rallied nearly 8% against the Dollar on the back of safe-haven flows but generally the Dollar index is 1.4% lower on the month. Please refer to the PDF for our usual table and charts.
Below are the best performing assets in local currency...
... and USD terms.
And the same for 2016 YTD local currency:
And rebased into US Dollars.