Portfolio manager comments — Q1 2025
Donald Trump’s trade policy continues to dominate the mood of the market, and several statements about increased tariffs resulted in clear stock market declines worldwide. The Stockholm stock exchange fell, while global markets declined even more, driven primarily by a weaker US equity market. As a result, Q1 can be summarized with clear declines in the US equity markets, while Europe and Sweden have held up relatively well thus far and are at the same levels as the turn of the year.
We also saw significant movement in the fixed income and foreign exchange markets, where long-term rates in Sweden and Europe have risen approximately 0.3 percent since year-end, and the SEK has strengthened significantly against both the USD and EUR. The exchange rate against the USD has fluctuated from SEK 11 to SEK 10 per USD since year-end, which had a negative impact on Swedish investors’ investments in foreign securities.
The major policy shifts in the US entail a trade policy whirlwind, where tariffs are introduced one day, paused the next day, and doubled on the third day. This creates significant uncertainty in the markets as the transparency for both investors and economists is poor and results in higher risk aversion. Furthermore, the geopolitical concern is heightened at the same time as old structures and alliances are changing.
We expect stock market performance to be marked by further volatility as well as be news-driven. The political structures we have known for years are changing and lead to natural consequences. Our basic view is that the economy will improve, which should provide support to the equity markets during the year. When the political turmoil has settled, the focus should shift in this direction.
The global equity portfolio had a clear overweight in European equities, which was a position we recently reduced after strong share price performance. We have underweights in major technology companies within US equities in favor of smaller companies that we believe can benefit from the tax policies Trump is expected to push forward. Sector-wise, the portfolio has an overweight in industrials and healthcare companies, while we have an underweight in technology and financials.
In the short term, the outlooks are more uncertain but we believe there are many well-managed high-quality companies that have been significantly undervalued without a change to their fundamental situation. This leads to buying opportunities over a longer perspective. For the time being we are retaining the overweight in equities relative to fixed income.