Pension funds with negative performance in September

The Swisscanto pension fund monitor shows an average performance of -0.3 per cent for Swiss pension funds last month. Foreign equities and private markets (private equity, infrastructure and direct real estate) delivered positive returns, the company said in a statement on Monday.

However, they were unable to offset the negative performance of bonds, Swiss equities and alternative investments.

Since the start of the year (YTD), the average performance of all funds remains clearly in positive territory at 4.6 per cent, according to the calculations.

The capital-weighted funding ratio of privately owned funds edged down slightly to 123.7 per cent in September. For public-law funds with full funding, the funding ratio now stands at 117.5 per cent, and for those with partial funding at 94.3 per cent. All funding ratios fell by 0.4 percentage points in September.

Among the investment funds, foreign equities performed clearly better than Swiss equities, with a return of 1.3 per cent versus -2.5 per cent. YTD, foreign equities also posted the strongest performance among the categories under review, at 17.8 per cent.

Swiss real estate once again showed two faces in September: while direct investments achieved a positive performance of 0.4 per cent, indirect investments posted a negative result of -1.9 per cent.

Commodities recorded the weakest performance among the reported asset classes in September at -4.1 per cent, due to the sharp decline in gold.

In the current environment, robust growth, solid earnings prospects in the technology sector and moderate investor sentiment continue to favour equity investments, Swisscanto writes. Market expectations of monetary tightening are considered exaggerated.