Julien Moutier

head of portfolio management, FundQuest, BNP Paribas Group

Based in: Paris, France

“January proved to be a pretty tough month for equity markets. Our active managers were penalised by strong sector and country rotation. Even emerging markets suffered from inflationary pressure, especially in China. Given the cheap valuations in the eurozone, we replaced part of our pan European holdings with the BlackRock Euro Markets fund which focuses on this area. We cut our corporate investment grade holdings as current yields are no longer compelling compared to euro sovereign debt. We bought a eurozone high yield vehicle, Allianz Euro High Yield, as investors are discounting higher default rates than forecast.”