JPM Latin America Equity offers a highly experienced manager at the helm, a well-resourced underlying analyst team, and a structured investment process. Our conviction in the team and approach has not changed, with the People and Process Pillars staying at Above Average. As a result, the clean C share class will be rated Silver and other share classes will range from Neutral to Silver, dependent on fees. The strategy has been managed by Latin American specialist Luis Carillo, who has run this strategy since January 2003 and has 25 years of investment experience at JPM covering Latin American stocks. Rachel Rodrigues, who has been a dedicated Latin American analyst since 2015, was added as the backup manager on the Latin American strategy following the departure of Sophie Bosch de Hood in 2021. The managers are well-supported by eight sector analysts focused on Latin American equities, as well as select developed market analysts. The process, codesigned by Carillo, is focused around quality growth businesses, and, similar to other emerging-markets strategies at JPM, is focused on longer-term investing, with a horizon of three to five years. This somewhat distinguishes it from peers who are more focused on value-oriented names in the region, and this process has been implemented consistently for 20 years by Carillo.Whilst performance struggled versus the MSCI Emerging Markets Latin America Index in 2022, with the C share class returning 20.7% versus 22.6% (in GBP terms), the fund beat its Morningstar Category average. The underperformance against the index is largely a facet of the significant style bias to growth and quality, and we would expect the fund to underperform in a market driven by value-oriented cyclical stocks and commodity names, as we saw in 2022. As a result, performance remains very much in line with our expectations, and the historical track record remains strong.
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