What’s Hot, What’s Not: Commodities Hot, US Not [Sector Edition]

January’s top and bottom performing sectors almost perfectly mirror the best and worst funds throughout the month, which you can read in the link below. Energy and raw material focused sectors dominate the top spots, whilst the US-heavy sectors continue to struggle.

January's Fund Edition here

What’s Hot

• Latin America has had consecutive strong months, previously up 3.80% in December and now up 5.49% throughout January.
• Unsurprisingly Commodity/Natural Resources features as well. The combination of continued inflationary pressures and the rising threat of a conflict in Eastern Europe is helping to push the prices of many raw materials up.
• Two low-risk sectors make up the 3^rd and 4^th spots in the shape of Global EM Bonds (Local Currency) and UK Direct Property.
• When the Short-Term Money Market sector (essentially another name for cash deposits) appears in the Hot table, you know it’s been a tough month for mainstream stock markets!

What’s Not

• The US dominates here, the bottom three sectors are all US centric and the period of underperformance for US stocks stretches on once more.
• Japanese Smaller Companies, down 9.79% in January, also features. The worst fund, Baillie Gifford Japanese Smaller Companies, is down over 18% for the month.
• European Smaller Companies complete the dud sectors for January, down an average of 9.21%.
• The message?  Risk is being taken off the table.

What’s Hot

What’s Not

Sector performance 01/01/2022 – 31/01/2022. No size filter applied. All Investment Association sectors considered.

NOTE

We do this blog to simply highlight short term trends. These are not recommendations.