Fulcrum Thematic Equity Market Neutral

The fund currently has $500m+ in the UCITS structure but is running north of $1bn+ at the overall strategy level. Given the current macro environment one of the major themes in the book is long European energy majors, short ecommerce. On the long side the team believe oil demand is still recovering from the pandemic and we are yet to see a full recovery in the aviation sector. Further, years of industry under-investment, the war in Ukraine and subsequent production decline in coming years act as additional catalysts. The team present the case for the short side, looking to target ecommerce firms that benefited from pandemic overspending on goods, as well as overinvestment in warehouse and logistic infrastructure. They see these valuations as overvalued and getting challenged from an increasing cost of capital combined with consumer wallets getting squeezed by energy and interest rate (inflation) shocks. The team are targeting the European consumer names more vs US. The position was in initiated in January 2022 and has delivered on both sides since.