| Monthly comment for February |
|
2010-03-02 Concern about the level of government debt in the so-called PIIGS-countries (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) remained the main theme on the market in February. The big difference in February, compared to January, was that these concerns now hit the Euro hard, which dropped 4.98% against the Swedish Krona and 2.93% against the U.S. Dollar. Thus, the MSCI Europe index lost ground and was down 0.18% in February while the MSCI World - which is heavily weighted against the U.S. - rose by 3.29%, largely explained by currency effects. Save Earth Fund developed considerably better than the index for renewable energy and environmental technologies - which continued to underperform in February and has now lost over 10% YTD - but worse than the World index and the water index. Our approach to underweight renewable energy and environmental technologies and overweight cash and water turned out well during the month, but was not sufficient to protect the fund against the relatively strong decline in renewable energy and environmental technology. The main cause of the continued weakness in the renewable energy and environmental technology sector can be attributed, once again, to the solar sector. The solar companies continued to lose ground after a proposal in the beginning of the month, making it now very likely that the German feed-in tariffs will be lowered by 16% from the first of June this year - a delay of two months but one percentage point sharper than expected. The Q4 reports from the solar companies was another cold shower for the sector; the majority came in worse than expected due to large impairments caused by sharp falls in the price of solar cells and silicon and few dared to give any guidance for the second half of 2010 - when the effects of the subsidy cuts will show up in the companies’ order books and pricing power. Taken together, the events contributed to lowering the solar sector by 8.84% during the month. 
Share Link: 
|
Subscribe to blog
The fund in short
Save Earth Fund invests in renewable energy, environmental technology and water management through actively managed funds, ETFs and stocks. The fund is the only of its kind in Sweden. Our aim is to generate a return that clearly exceeds that of the MSCI World index, with a lower than the average risk of environmental funds. No minimum investment. The management fee is 1%. Daily subscriptions/redemptions. Mr Carl Bernadotte, Mr Alexander Jansson and Mr Marcus Grimfors are responsible for managing the fund. Learn more about our managers here. |