Overall Market Backdrop, May
- While recent performance has been in direct correlation with vaccine rollouts and supportive economic data, equities have been more muted in May due to inflation fears looming over global equity markets.
- Among the developed markets, Europe is noteworthy for its performance in May, driven by its vaccine rollout success which has meant that jabs are being provided to approximately 0.8% of the population per day.
- Value was the best performing Factor in May, returning a modest 0.83%.
- US equities were majorly impacted by growth and inflation fears throughout May. Economic data showed that year-on-year inflation rose to 4.2% and month-on-month inflation rose to 0.8%.
- While the UK was leading the charge in terms of vaccination rates, May has seen major European economies play catch up, jabs are now being provided to around 0.8% of the population per day, in line with the UK.
- Emerging Market equities were constrained during the month of May and most of this stems from Chinese growth stocks which have corrected by over 20% since February.