Your fund comfortably outperformed both its benchmark and its target in March. Positive attribution sources included exposures to government bonds, a longer duration (conflated with the first factor), high dividend yielders and the more aggressive debt yield enhancers present in the fund. Last month's star performer - Zamplats pref - was this month's main detractor, costing the fund 6bps of underperformance through its total return of -1.19%.

Bonds returned 2.6% in March and 6.6% for the first quarter of 2016. Considering that inflation contemporaneously increased in a more-or-less straight line from 5.2% to 7%, ivory tower bond theorists must be puzzled. The strength in bonds is paradoxically explained primarily by one expected and one unexpected development. The former was the degree to which the market had anticipated the sharp increase in inflation (due to rand weakness and the effect of the deleterious drought on food prices) while the latter was a less-than-usually nuanced speech by Janet Yellen, chair of the Fed. She fairly abruptly gave the markets to understand that US monetary policy may tighten at a much slower rate than had been generally expected. This led to rand strength, and in its wake, bond strength.

December was an ..F....month: Fitch, Finance Minister and Fed. Investors may be inclined to add to this.

Early in the month, SA's sovereign rating was lamentably cut, but this was so well anticipated that bonds barely budged. On Wednesday 9th, all hell broke loose as the fiasco of the Finance Ministers - three in five days - unfolded. Thursday 10th was the second worst day on record for the local bond market. Nine of the ten worst days were due to external factors (rand free fall, LTCM, Russian default, Asian crises) but tragically, this was self-inflicted and utterly avoidable. When the dust settled, the cost of government borrowing (the tab for feckless political folly must of course be picked up by ill-fated taxpayers) was 70bps higher. Through no fault of their own, South African banks had their borrowing costs raised very significantly. The unweighted average share price of SA..s 4 big banks was down nearly 14% on 10th December.

On 16th December, the Fed finally increased rates; the first time it had done so since the iPhone was invented. Economists who patted their own backs for expecting this should recall that they had expected it for the past five years. As the old saying goes "Even a stuck clock is right twice a day".

Some consolation comes from the fact that your fund now yields over 9%. Inflation of nearly 7% is being discounted by bonds. November's print was 4.8%. If you follow the thinking that Minister Gordhan probably now has very considerable autonomy, 2016 should be a better year for bonds.