Duncan Robertson

Market Outlook

Global SMID-Cap Outlook

Outlook

Latest Global SMID-Cap economic and market outlook. 


Hero

The ongoing war in Iran presents a significant challenge to the positioning of the fund, since the European and Asian regions, which we are overweight, are more dependent on energy imports than the US, which we are underweight. 

At this stage we have made few changes to the portfolio as a result of the war. Indeed, to the extent we have made changes, it has largely been to add to positions that we believe have discounted an overly negative scenario, such as MakeMyTrip. 

Whilst there is a high degree of uncertainty on the path from here, we note several factors that point to a swift reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump clearly wants to declare victory and move on. The war is polling badly and hitting him further on the cost-of-living narrative. China’s involvement in pushing Iran to the negotiating table is significant – China buys a significant portion of Iranian crude and supplies components to the Iranian military industrial complex. The involvement of large Muslim majority nations such as Pakistan and Turkey in mediation helps. Iran also needs to sell oil. It therefore cannot afford to antagonise the whole world by shutting the Strait of Hormuz for too long. The position of blocking the Strait becomes harder to justify as military conflict winds down – especially since other advanced nations steadfastly refused to join the US in the war.

If we are correct in the above analysis, then we would expect oil prices to fall, and the USD to correct. This should be a strong positive for our positioning, as Europe and Asia would be key beneficiaries of this environment. Even our US holdings would likely benefit, as one of our key themes, Building Materials, benefit from lower rates.  

With the war leading to a further sell off in India, we are seeing value in that market to a greater degree than we have done in a long time. We have recently added to our weighting, mostly through MakeMytrip, and India remains a significant overweight for the fund.

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