UK – Equities have nudged into positive territory for the first time this year, according to the CAPS UK Pooled Pension Fund Survey second quarter results.

The survey, covering 89 asset managers with over £199bn (€324.5bn) in balanced and specialist pooled funds, shows positive returns from equities over the last three months, in contrast to the two previous quarters.

The increase is mainly seen in the performance of balanced funds, where a median return of 1% is recorded.

The report suggests that trustees are including more and more non-gilts into the fixed income element of their fund-specific benchmarks, with 15% of pension funds making explicit exposure, up from 3% in the space of a year.

Sector wise, general industrials were the best performers, with returns of 8.1%.
IT stocks remained the laggards showing negative returns for the third consecutive quarter at -19.4%

Other results show UK equities outdone by overseas equities, although Europe was the only region to produce negative returns.

Bond returns were also marginally in the red, despite falling interest rates.

Notable differences could again be found in growth and value stocks, with high yielding equities returning 5.4%, against –4.6% for low yielding stocks.