Global investing in an era of national self-reliance

As governments shift their national priorities in response to escalating geopolitical tension, global investors have to consider additional variables as they construct balanced portfolios. Alec Cutler, portfolio manager at our offshore partner, Orbis, explains how recent developments are shaping the Orbis SICAV Global Balanced Fund’s opportunity set.

The Orbis SICAV Global Balanced Fund’s 2025 performance has been encouraging, having comfortably outpaced its benchmark and peer group over the period. It’s helpful to recognise that the current strength was born of a period of relative performance pain. Many of the positions that contributed to recent performance were established during 2019 to 2021, when we were building exposure to stocks, currencies and commodities that were deeply out of favour at the time. Performance suffered during that period, not only because we were buying these so-called “losers”, but also because we were funding those purchases by trimming or exiting “winners”. Those winning positions had performed well but, in our view, had become less attractive relative to emerging opportunities, where the discount to our estimate of intrinsic value was much wider, even as investor enthusiasm for the winners continued to grow.

Read full article on: https://www.allangray.co.za/latest-insights/offshore-investing/global-investing-in-an-era-of-national-self-reliance/

July 15 2025 By Alec Cutler - Allan Gray