After rising to their highest point since record lows in 2020 last week, the upward momentum in US
treasury yields paused. Despite this pause, Jerome Powell stated that Federal Reserve officials have been
monitoring the rise in yields since January but rejected claims that it warranted concerns.

We are thrilled to announce that the Sanlam Real Assets UCITS Fund has received “Best Specialist Real Assets Fund” at the Investment Week Specialist Investment Awards 2020.

It has been a strong week for equities as further dovishness from the Federal Reserve helped bolster market sentiment. Investors were relatively unfazed by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s further reminders that the pandemic is far from over, or by surprisingly high applications for US state unemployment insurance.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine began its rollout this week to vulnerable over-80’s and health & care staff cohorts. This week marked the first distribution of over 800,000 doses expected to be delivered in the coming weeks and the four million expected by the end of the month.

It has been another strong week for markets with the S&P 500 Index (measuring the performance of the 500 largest listed US companies) hitting all-time highs against a backdrop of a surging bond market. Previous iterations of this publication have highlighted the trend of fairly rapidly and persistently rising bond yields over recent weeks; the pause in this dynamic this week has been slightly strange, especially given the strong print on US retail sales which was announced on Thursday.

London – Sanlam Investments today announces that it has agreed to assume responsibility for managing eight funds currently managed by Smith & Williamson Investment Management LLP.