Asset Allocation & Fund Positioning, Copley Fund Research

Steven Holden

Steven Holden is the CEO and Founder of Copley Fund Research, an independent provider of research on equity fund positioning and performance.  Set up in 2014, Copley focuses on global, global emerging market, US, Asia Ex-Japan and China active equity funds, covering over $4tr in assets across 1300 active managers.  The company provides data and analysis on market trends, manager exposures and active fund performance to an audience of investment managers, pension funds and fund selectors worldwide.  Mr Holden’s 14-year investment banking career started in 2000, where he worked for Morgan Stanley as an equity derivative trader focused on emerging markets in London.  Following this, he spent 4 years at Citibank in London and Hong Kong as an Executive Director in derivative sales, focused again on emerging markets.

Asset Allocation & Fund Positioning

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Copley Fund Research

Copley Fund Research provide research and data on asset allocation among Global and Emerging Market equity funds.  The analysis details absolute and relative positioning across countries, sectors and industries together with highly granular data on single stock and single fund allocations.  The data is updated monthly with time series going back to January 2011.

Global Research - Analysis of 165 prominent Global equity funds, combined AUM $335bn
GEM Research - Analysis of 127 prominent global EM equity funds, combined AUM $250bn

Asset Allocation - Global and GEM Equity

Cross Asset Strategy

<ul>
<li>Average holding weights in China &amp; HK have fallen to their lowest levels since late 2019. From a peak of 38.26% in October 2020, exposure has dropped to 29.01%</li>
<li>China underweights have contracted due to a combination of Russian overweights being displaced, and on the back of significant falls in the price of key index holdings.</li>
<li>China is still the largest holding in EM by a margin, but was costly to EM managers over the last year.  Active managers may be tempted to reduce allocations.</li>
</ul>


Average holding weights in China &amp; HK have fallen to their lowest levels since late 2019. From a peak of 38.26% in October 2020, exposure has dropped to 29.01%
China underweights have contracted due to a combination of Russian overweights being displaced, and on the back of significant falls in the price of key index holdings.
China is still the largest holding in EM by a margin, but was costly to EM managers over the last year.  Active managers may be tempted to reduce allocations.


China:  EM Investors Precariously Positioned