Monthly Portfolio Changes

In September, we made several changes to the portfolios. In fixed income, we sold development bank bonds and UK corporate bonds and switched our existing exposure to EUR corporate bonds into an alternative solution that excludes corporations that do not meet strict criteria concerning socially responsible investing. This ETF has delivered superior returns over time and should benefit from future ECB bond buying programs. We also switched our emerging market exposure from hard currency corporates to Chinese local currency government bonds given attractive yields and plans for large scale inclusion in global bond indices. In equities, we took profit on our allocation to South Korean equities, where valuations looked stretched, and we also reduced our exposure to smart beta by selling our US multifactor position. We invested the proceeds into US and Chinese technology companies and topped up our existing allocation to US healthcare stocks. Finally, within our commodity carve-out, we sold our position in coffee. We did not make any changes to our investments in property this month.