Photo : D.R.
Volatility is the buzzword of the moment. Some even talk of hyper-volatility
in the market, whilst the well-known financial investor Warren Buffett continually repeats one of his observations that earned him fame: “Remember that the stock market is manic-depressive.”
What types of investments should one choose? And what risks are involved? “We live in a special time when all investors demand security and transparency above all,” puts Karine Szenberg, Managing Director of the Parisian branch of JPMorgan Asset Management. “The time when clients sought super-performance is over, now they want us to oversee their exposure to risk. They also want to understand the products that make up each line in their portfolios and they are attentive to the way in which our funds are conceived.” In this new investment landscape, JPMorgan, thanks to its renown and solidity, is ahead other financial institutions in its capacity to win the trust of investors able to project themselves four or five years into the future.
The proof of this trust: from August to the end of December 2008, assets in the bank’s AAA-rated monetary funds increased by 46%, in other words a 30% share of the world market. One of the advantages of JPMorgan AM is due to the size of the funds it manages. “We are sufficiently large to absorb our clients’ inevitable entrance and exit movements,” explains Karine Szenberg. In fact, asset managers in the US bank, whose house funds come in most of the planet’s leading currencies, advise investors to remain with monetary values without taking undue risks. So the end has come for “dynamic” products, now is the time for security products which allow liquidity to be supplied at any given time. With massive falls in certain values, opportunities to seize have also arisen, notably for certain US values, now heavily depreciated, but which offer consequential dividends.
In another segment, JPMorgan AM has conceived an absolute performance fund that allows for piloted risk management. Baptised JPM Highbridge Statistical Market Neutral Fund, this fund is based on a statistical trade-off model and aims to generate long-term positive returns non-correlated with the evolution of the investment universe.This product produced returns of + 12,7% in 2008. In the same mindset, the bank promotes classes of real assets, that is funds that invest directly in infrastructures as well as in the US real-estate market. “We are organising seminars on these funds to which the general public does not have direct access, and the message has been well received.”
JP Morgan, a giant in asset management
Present in France since 1868, JPMorgan is the most Gallic of US banks. Established at Place Vendôme since 1916, the bank is home to the group’s services for investment banking, wealth management, accounting and securities, and UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) distribution. 10 FCPs (collective investment funds) created under French law and 130 sub-funds of Luxembourg SICAVs (open-ended collective investment funds) are offered by JPMorgan AM to a clientele composed of institutional clients, private banks and funds of funds, as well as retail clients (independent wealth management consultants, retail banks). On the world scale, JPMorgan AM is, with 814 billion euros in assets under management on 31/12/08, one of the greatest names in this domain, and employs 6,595 employees, including 693 investment professionals with a network established in 40 cities, including New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
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