Performance of the Old Mill Portfolios

Although company earnings have held up well, the value of future profits, once higher interest rates are taken into account have less value to investors today and led to share prices falls.

Going into 2023, we see a lot of positives – the annual rate of inflation around the world seems to have peaked and there is a growing expectation that interest rates will stop rising within the next 12 months. This could lay the foundations for a new bull market to emerge which will mean an increase in growth assets. After a year during which the UK had four Chancellors of the Exchequer and three Prime Ministers, greater political stability would also be welcomed by the financial markets and the economy generally.

Performance since the last insight (from Friday 2 November 2022 to Friday 6 January 2023)

Markets have been largely positive since October but uncertainty, at the time, over the likelihood or not of future interest rate rises and recession saw a dip at the beginning of December.

Performance over the last year (up to Friday 6 January 2023)

Since the beginning of last year and with a UK focus, it has been easy to miss the pressure on global stocks. In the UK, there is a greater number of companies that are more ‘value’ focused. These may be more established and not growing as quickly or in a more mature industry. In particular energy stocks and financials – of which the UK has a greater share than the global economy as a whole. These companies through 2022 have performed better so the UK market has not fallen as much.

Ten-year performance of standard portfolios (up to Friday 6 January 2023)

Investing is a longer-term pursuit and taking a look at the ten year graph to the beginning of December, the portfolios are showing a more robust picture.

Sustainable portfolios performance since the last insight (from Friday 2 November 2022 to Friday 6 January 2023)

Sustainable portfolios performance has been similar to standard portfolios.

Sustainable portfolios performance over the last year (up to Friday 6 January 2023)

Over the year, as sustainable portfolios have no exposure to the oil and gas sector, which has been one to the top performers, they have lagged behind standard portfolios.

Longer term performance of Sustainable portfolios (up to Friday 6 January 2023)

As the sustainable portfolios have only been available for the last five years this is a shorter timeframe but still showing the potential upside over longer periods.

In the short-term inflation has risen against portfolio performance but investing remains a longer term pursuit and investing into assets that can provide protection against inflation such as equites can grow your wealth in real (after inflation) terms.

Below shows the performance of a number of asset classes for the last year and the annualised return over ten years as at close of play on Saturday 31 December 2022.

The left-hand column shows the movement of assets over the year and while there have been lots of falling values, there have been some bright spots, notably value companies and UK equities providing diversification for portfolios. Over ten years, there have been strong returns for growth assets across the board but with sharp falls this year whereas the longer term picture for defensive assets is flat. This does mask the necessary job defensive assets usually play in protecting assets when stock markets are volatile as they clearly have been in recent years.