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Part of the US equities team at JP Morgan--
and I've actually been with the firm
for just over 26 years, all of that time
with the US equities team.
I started my career in our New York office,
but many years ago moved back to Europe.
My role is an investment specialist.
You could say I'm the voice and face of the funds for our US
equity portfolio managers.
Their goal at the end of the day is to give a good performance,
while we also recognize there's a lot of client need
to meet with portfolio managers are to learn about our funds.
And so to a certain extent, I can take that workload off them
and ensure that our clients get adequate access to information
about performance, portfolio holdings, or just
the insights of the portfolio managers themselves.
The JP Morgan American Investment Trust
aims to achieve capital growth from North American investments
by out-performance of the S&P 500 index.
The company will predominantly invest
in quoted companies, including, when appropriate,
exposure to smaller capitalization companies
and emphasize capital growth rather than income.
The company has the ability to use borrowing
to gear the portfolio within the range of 5% net cash
to 20% geared in normal market conditions.
For the JP Morgan American Investment Trust,
we really see it as US equities handpicked by experts.
So what we have, of course, is a fantastic value team,
a fantastic growth team that can bring together their best ideas
on the large cap side, so that we have
approximately 40 stocks there.
We then, of course, have small cap allocation,
which is really important.
But that does create a tail in the holdings,
because about 90% or more of the actual allocation in [? jam ?]
is to value and grow stocks.
So we really have great expertise in that area.
And that's really important.
We look at that expertise.
It's not just the portfolio managers themselves
but a deep bench of research analysts behind them.
And this was really evident in times like COVID.
When COVID impacted every stock in the marketplace globally,
portfolio managers didn't need to go it alone.
They had that deep bench of research analysts
who can dig deep into the numbers, look
at the implications for every company line by line,
and really partner with the portfolio managers
to give those insights.
It's also experience.
This is a very experienced investment team.
Our research analysts have on average 20 years' investment
experience.
And our portfolio managers have over decades of experience.
They've been through multiple market cycles.
And then again, for us, is really, really important.
They're focused on the long-term.
They're focused on companies that they
can look to invest in over a full market cycle, which we
define as three to five years.
So the ideas really come true from our research analysts,
our dedicated teams that support our value, growth,
and small cap portfolio managers,
and also our holding period.
But really, we're looking at that three years plus.
And so we really are those long-term investors.
Over the last one, three, and five year period,
the American Investment Trust has
performed very well, both relative to peers
but also relative to benchmark.
A lot has happened during this period.
If we stretch out five years, we lived through a period
where we thought the mark was going
to go into recession in 2019 followed by COVID in 2020.
And then, of course, we had the great news on the vaccine
to get the market hope.
We've lived through periods where values outperformed,
where growth is outperformed, where
small caps have done well.
And yet throughout this period, sticking to our investment
process, sticking to our discipline,
stock selection has really helped us.
At the end of the day, it's not about styles.
It's not about for us for value or growth
outperforming the other.
It really is having the right stocks in the portfolio.
We can find good quality companies
in the value space, good quality companies in the growth space,
good quality small cap names.
The outlook for the US equity market over the next 12 months
is probably one of the most challenging questions
that we get asked.
This year, we've dealt a lot with the markets,
being obsessed about a recession, a recession that
has yet to happen.
And with that, what we are seeing,
though, is an economy that we do expect
to slow, not fall off a cliff, but slow down somewhat.
Because today we're looking at an economy that's
growing above expectations.
We're close to 5% economic growth.
So we do expect it to slow down somewhat over the next 12
months.
But again, we don't see it falling off that cliff.
A lot of what we need to focus on
is not so much for us, the Fed, not so much for us
inflation, a company's earnings and earnings expectations.
And that for us is key, at the end of the day.
We're not macro strategists, though we
do pay attention to what's happening in the macro
environment.
But we're really listening to companies,
for them to give us guidance and how
they're feeling for the next three, six, 12 months, where
they're making investments, where they have concerns, where
they see their margins going.
These are all key ingredients for us
when we're thinking about stocks,
because stocks are the building block to the overall portfolio.
But as we said, we pay attention to the macro.
But long-term, it's really those insights
we get from companies that help us build
the names within the portfolio.
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