Welcome to your August update

Dear investor, welcome to the SBS Wealth Investment Funds Investor Update for August 2025. Below you will find the latest performance data and market commentary from your SBS Wealth Investment Management Team. 

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Performance data

Performance as at 30 June 2025. 

Performance is shown after fees and before tax. For more information about how performance is calculated and more performance periods, click here. 

Market update

Equity markets delivered a third month in a row of positive returns, amid greater clarity on trade tariffs for a 1 August deadline.

The US announced tariff deals with a number of major trading partners in advance of the deadline. Additionally, the House of Representatives approved President Trump’s flagship tax and spending bills.

Technology stocks continued their rebound from the falls suffered earlier in the year. Optimism over the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) powered related stocks higher. Several technology stocks also posted some well-received quarterly earnings during July. Meanwhile, there was an agreement by the US that semiconductor companies could resume shipments of some key advanced processors to the Chinese market.

Elsewhere, some more defensive sectors – including healthcare and Consumer Staples – underperformed during July.

Around the rest of the world Eurozone stocks also advanced amid relief on tariffs and positive corporate earnings updates. Japan was up on the back of a better than feared election outcome, and reaching a favourable trade deal with the US (benefitting exporters and global cyclicals). Emerging markets outperformed developed markets, thanks to strong performance from the heavyweights Taiwan, China and Korea.

Within global bonds, the market focused on trade negotiations and on renewed fiscal discipline concerns. This caused global government bond yields to rise (negative for fixed interest returns). Corporate bonds performed better, amid an improvement in economic sentiment.

The US has set a 15% tariff on New Zealand goods exports, which came into force 1 August (previously 10%). This equates to an extra $500m in tariffs each year that US importers will have to pay to purchase NZ goods exports. This could be a risk for beef, dairy and wine. Dairy is dependent on a good result from US-China trade negotiations. On the positive, the NZ property sector rebounded back in July, after a tough last 1-2 years.

This impacted on the New Zealand stock market, which while it was up 1.8%, it was below most other global stock markets. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) kept the OCR at 3.25%, with a 0.25% reduction in August still expected.

The World Equity Fund returned 2.40% for July and 9.66% for the last quarter, on the back of three positive months. The Fund benefited from a high allocation to Technology stocks, in particular semi-conductors and data centres. An allocation to emerging markets also added value. A 20% allocation to defensive sectors Healthcare and Consumer Staples detracted some of that value. Main contributors to the Fund’s 2.4% were US construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar 16.4%, world leading healthcare science servicing Thermo Fisher 16.3%, US semi-conductor Nvidia 15.8%, Alphabet (Google) 12.0%, US healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson 10.9%, and Microsoft 10.3%.

The Australasian Equity Fund returned 2.31% for July and 8.65% for the last quarter. The Fund benefited from a 35% exposure to Australian stocks, which outperformed their NZ counterparts by over 2%. Main contributors to the Fund’s 2.31% return were Australian Resource company Fortescue +17.5%, Australian Healthcare company CSL +14.3%, Infratil 9.7%, Kiwi Property Group 9.6%, and EBOS Group 6.4%.

The World Bond Fund returned –0.06% for July and +0.34% for the last quarter. The benchmark Bloomberg Barclays Global Bond Aggregate Index was down –0.20%. The Fund did better than that by holding over 20% of its assets in the short duration DFA 2-Year Sustainability Fixed Interest PIE. This fund returned +0.3% as it was protected from increased global fixed interest yields.

The New Zealand Bond Fund returned +0.49% for July and 0.87% for the last quarter. There is a more balanced stance in the NZ fixed interest market, than its global peers, leading to a Fund with a good income stream from its underlying bonds and expectation of future OCR cuts based on economic projections.