At the end of May 2022, the NAV of Croatian mutual funds decreased by -2.4% MoM and amounted to HRK 17.1bn. On a YoY basis, this would mean amount to a decline of -13.6%, while on a YTD basis, the decline is even more profound, at -20.4%.
The Croatian Agency for the Supervision of Financial Institutions (HANFA) has published a monthly report on the changes recorded in the financial markets for May 2022. As the Croatian mutual funds have a major role in the Croatian financial markets, an overview of their performance can give us some insights into how the market is doing. At the end of May 2022, the NAV of the Croatian mutual funds amounted to HRK 17.1bn, which is a decrease of -2.4% MoM, -13.6% YoY, and -20.4% YTD.
This trend of the decline in NAV started at the end of 2021, as the uncertainty regarding the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic’s newest variant, Omicron, inflation, and the subsequent measures were slowing already slowing down investments. As the situation only got worse for the entire markets since then, with high inflation rates, exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Central banks across the world (most prominently Fed and ECB) have already started raising or are planning to start raising interest rates to combat this inflation. As this has a direct negative impact on the equity and bond markets, the decline in the assets of the mutual funds is to be expected.
To be more specific, the NAV of the Croatian mutual funds decreased by HRK -4.38bn since the beginning of the year. If we were to break this down by the asset class, the largest decrease by far was recorded in bond holdings, whose value decreased by -23.7%, or HRK -2.92bn YTD. Next up, we have deposits and cash, which lost -16.5% or HRK -801.7m of its value since the beginning of the year. Finally, we have shares, which lost -13.7% or HRK -355m of their total value since the beginning of the year. As a matter of fact, on a YTD basis, all asset classes lost value since the beginning of the year, showing that not only investments into asset classes across the board decreased, but people also pulled a significant amount of money out of these investments funds themselves. This is supported if we were to look at the net contributions into these funds, amounting to a decrease of HRK -281.7m in May 2022.
On a MoM basis, the story is similar but there are some differences. Bonds still maintain the highest absolute decline, at -5.7% or HRK -566.2m, followed by shares at -2.3% or HRK -52.4m, while investments into the money market and investments funds both experienced similar absolute decreases, of app. HRK -26.7m and HRK -26.4m, respectively. On the flip side, the only asset class to experience an increase was the deposits and cash, which grew by HRK 290.1m. If we were to combine this with the aforementioned decrease in net contributions, it can be surmised that there are major disinvestments into the majority of the asset classes, except the one with the lowest perceived risk, i.e. deposits and cash.
Furthermore, if we were to take a look at the asset structure of the mutual funds, bonds still remain the largest asset class as a % of the total, at 53.2%. However, this represents a decline of -2% MoM, -4.5% YoY, and -3% YTD. The remainder of the asset classes has remained roughly the same as a percentage, with the only exception being deposits and cash, which increased its holdings by 2.1 p.p. MoM to 22.9%.
Croatian mutual funds AUM structure (May 2022, %)
Looking at the investments of these funds into equity specifically, investments into domestic equity (which accounts for 27.2% of all equity investments) were down -15% YoY, -3.7% MoM. Meanwhile, investments into foreign equity holdings, which account for the remaining 72.8% of all equity investments, were down -31% YoY, and -5% MoM.
Total assets of all Croatian UCITS funds (2015 – May 2022, EURm)
