JPM Euroland Dynamic I2 perf (acc) EUR

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|27/09/2024

by Francesco Paganelli
In early October 2023, JPMorgan disclosed that John Baker has announced his intention to leave the firm in spring 2024. Baker was a veteran member in the firm’s Dynamic team, with 29 years of investment experience entirely spent at JPM Asset Management. Within the Dynamic outfit, Baker had a focus on the U.K. market and was a named portfolio manager on seven strategies. The firm will hire a junior analyst on a permanent basis, in keeping with the team’s history of grooming young talent, and reshuffled internal responsibilities by appointing additional portfolio managers across a range of funds. In particular, among his other responsibilities, Baker was a named portfolio manager on the firm’s Europe Dynamic and Euroland Dynamic. As a result, the firm added Alexander Whyte and Blake Crawford to the European and eurozone strategies’ management teams, respectively.

While the team will lose an experienced member, we think the rest of the group has sufficient breadth and depth of expertise to continue to execute the investment process with success. All four remaining managers in the team (team head Jon Ingram, as well as Crawford, Whyte, and Victoria Helvert) spent their entire career at JPM and have intimate knowledge of the systems and processes applied here. As evidence of its stability, this is only the second change in the team in 17 years. Managers work collegially and continue to draw from a number of additional resources within the wider International Equity Group. As a result, we reaffirm the strategies’ pillar ratings of Above Average for People and Average for Process.
 
JPM Euroland Dynamic’s strengths lie in its stable and effective team that is well-supported by a far-reaching organization. However, the investment process does not stand out in our view. Team head Jon Ingram has steered this strategy since the fund’s inception in 2011, providing continuity. Alex Whyte was named as an additional comanager in April 2019, whereas Blake Crawford joined the roster in late 2023 ahead of former comanager John Baker’s retirement from the industry in 2024. Victoria Helvert and recent hire Thomas Harray round out the Dynamic team headed by Ingram, which is part of the wider international equity group at JPM Asset Management. They sit alongside the research and implementation teams, working closely with them to execute the approach. The global analyst bank, whose bottom-up stock research provides deeper insights and fundamental analysis, is also a positive. This stable team is well-versed in the process, which attempts to combine quantitative research and fundamental analysis to target relatively cheaper, higher-quality stocks with an improving business outlook. The quantitatively driven model underpinning this offering has been in place since 2000, though it has evolved over time with ongoing enhancements implemented by the dedicated quantitative unit led by Nick Horne. The model screens out the least liquid stocks in the eurozone and identifies potential opportunities. Daily meetings are then held by the team to review the model’s output and cover company updates, published earnings changes, adjustments to estimates, and other relevant news flow around which analysts may carry out further research. The best stock ideas should display positive quality and momentum characteristics, while also being deemed attractively valued. The team ultimately combines 50-90 holdings to build a core portfolio, with new positions typically initiated on companies displaying positive earnings momentum. The portfolio is sufficiently diversified, but its exposure to the momentum factor is meaningful and usually ranks among the highest in its category. This leads to a high portfolio turnover of around 150% per year, which increases all-in costs and requires a hands-on approach. Internal risk systems are dynamic, helping to provide a good handle on positioning, style, and active risk contributions in real time. Over the current management team's tenure, performance is ahead of the Morningstar Developed Markets Eurozone Index and eurozone large-cap equity Morningstar Category average. However, the strategy tends to be riskier than peers, and its outperformance has been uneven, though recent results have been on the strong side. The process ultimately hinges on the persistence of factor premiums: When value and especially momentum are out of favor, the strategy struggles to keep up with the broader market. This works both ways, though, as factor exposures represented a tailwind from 2020 to 2022 as well as in the first half of 2024. Overall, the strategy is expected to deliver positive outcomes in stable market environments, where earnings and price momentum are driving returns, regardless of the trend direction. On the other hand, like many quant approaches, inflection points and rapidly changing market conditions may prove challenging to navigate.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™A cohesive, efficient team backed by powerful resources.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAbove Average
ParentAbove Average
ProcessAverage
 
Morningstar Medalist RatingMorningstar assigns the Medalist Rating to funds that are qualitatively and quantitatively assessed through manager research and algorithmic processes. The assessment turns on three key “pillars” – People, Process, and Parent – that yield an estimate of how well a fund will perform before fees but after adjusting for risk.
Permissions/Reprints   E-mail Morningstar     
A fim de prover consistência para todos os relatórios fornecidos por diferentes Asset Managers, os data points calculados apresentados são gerados usando uma metodologia de cálculo proprietária da Morningstar, que pode ser conferida com mais detalhes em(https://www.morningstar.com/research/signature)
© Copyright 2025 Morningstar, Inc. Todos os direitos reservados.

Termos de Uso        Política Privacidade        Cookie Settings        Divulgações