Top 15

We can not recall having seen the performance of the US equity market so concentrated on only a few names. The top 15 companies in the S&P 500 are up 34% while the median company in the S&P 500 is only up 1%. In Europe the situation is less extreme but still. Instead of spending their days analysing companies, the successful portfolio managers this year were the ones investing only in the 15 names. On the contrary, the ones avoiding the trodden path and invested outside these consensus names, have likely underperformed their benchmark this year. We believe such a situation is more the exception than the rule and will probably reverse soon.