After five consecutive months of negative returns, equity funds in Canada produced strong gains in October as general optimism seemed to return—albeit temporarily—to the world’s stock markets.
All but one of the 22 Morningstar Canada Fund Indices that track equity categories had positive returns for the month, with 14 of them gaining 5% or more, according to preliminary performance data released today by Morningstar Canada.
Foreign markets for the most part outperformed their Canadian counterpart during the month, but for Canadian fund investors these solid performances were tempered by currency effects, with the Canadian dollar appreciating by more than 4% against the U.S. dollar and many Asian currencies. As a result, the returns of the Morningstar Canada Fund Indices that measure foreign equity categories were much lower than the corresponding market benchmarks when expressed in local currency.
Among the major diversified foreign equity categories, the Morningstar U.S. Small/Mid Cap Equity Fund Index had the best return with 9%, while the indices that measure the Emerging Markets Equity, Greater China Equity and U.S. Equity categories gained 8.1%, 8.1% and 7.3%, respectively. The International Equity and Global Equity fund indices both gained 5.4% in October. The worst performer, and the only Morningstar Canada equity fund index to lose ground last month was Japanese Equity, which lost 4.1% despite positive results on Japanese stock markets; this was due to the yen’s depreciation of 5.6% against the loonie.
The best-performing fund index overall was Natural Resources Equity, which gained 11.3%.
Among Canadian equity funds, those that focus on smaller companies edged out the large-cap offerings. The Morningstar Canadian Small/Mid Cap Equity and Canadian Focused Small/Mid Cap Equity fund indices gained 7.1% and 6.4%, respectively, while the Canadian Focused Equity and Canadian Equity fund indices were up 5.7% and 5.6%, respectively.