Zürich-based Franz Konzept was manager of the top performing fund in February returning an impressive 5.65% in a month where many funds struggled to find their feet. This brought the fund to a 10.69% YTD. “We benefited from our overweight position in long-term US and Japanese government bonds,” said Lars Oberle, CEO of Finanz Konzept, “Due to increasing global fear of a coronavirus epidemic, the fund was switched to crisis mode.” The fund invests globally in corporate and convertible bonds, short-term securities and debt derivatives. It also commits to invest in greatly undervalued bonds, which in turn benefit from a recovery in credit quality. Said Oberle: “We will continue to pursue our strategy in the coming months after we expect serious economic damage worldwide.”

Triple Opportunity Fixed Income Fund

Funds from across different categories made it into the Creditflux top 10 for February. As the pandemic unravelled, as data began to show which positions managed to ride this volatile wave. Two corporate long-short funds took the top three spots, as Orchard’s Liquid Credit Fund joined Finanz Konzept with a 1.45% return pulling its last 12 months figure up to 6.73%. Marathon’s Corporate Loan Fund took second place as it stood out from its peers in the US high yield category, being the only fund to return over 0.05% in February. The Axa IM Novalto CLO Credit Fund also bucked the trend in the CLOs category, with the fund leading the way as many CLO funds struggled after a very generous few months for the asset class. The fund returned 0.79% bringing 12-month returns up to 8.28%.

February signalled the slowdown in performance for many credit funds. As covid-19 worries moved from east to west, many markets followed suit. Previous positive returns in December and January continued for some funds, but it was an uphill struggle for many.