Management Company Name Changed - Official Announcement13 Mar 2023
Counterpoint Asset Management will change it's name to Merchant West Investments, effective from 13 March 2023.
Counterpoint SCI Balanced Plus - Dec 22 - Fund Manager Comment22 Feb 2023
Market Overview and Fund Performance Review
To slow the pace of rapidly rising consumer prices, central banks throughout the world started raising interest rates at the beginning of 2022. A combination of supply chain bottlenecks, increased geopolitical tensions and an energy crisis in Europe pushed global consumer price inflation to multi-decade highs, forcing central banks to respond. The US Federal Reserve has been very aggressive in its efforts to curb inflation, raising official interest rates by 425 basis points in 2022.
In the fourth quarter, the Federal Open Market Committee met twice to set policy rates, raising the Federal Funds rate by 75 basis points following the conclusion of their November meeting, before slowing the pace of rate hikes to 50 basis points at their December meeting. Interest rates are expected to rise further although there is growing evidence that consumer inflation has peaked and is expected to fall towards 3% by the end of 2023. The likelihood of a recession in the US remains high, given the sharp rise in short-term interest rates and the prognosis is no different for the UK and Europe. China’s economy is likely to buck the global trend and grow faster in 2023 as the country emerges from very strict COVID restrictions which hampered growth in both 2021 and 2022.