On Sunday, March 6, CAPTRUST Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Mike Vogelzang appeared on both Bloomberg TV and radio to discuss the impact of the geopolitical situation in Russia and CAPTRUST’s response.
First, Vogelzang joined Shery Ahn and Haidi Stroud-Watts on Bloomberg Daybreak: Australia where he spoke about how CAPTRUST is taking defensive positions within its portfolios across equities and fixed income.
“We have upgraded the quality of our fixed income portfolios quite a bit. We have sold mortgages and corporates. We have increased our Treasury exposure given demand for liquidity. You need to be there ahead of time,” said Vogelzang.
When it comes to equity exposure, Vogelzang also shared that CAPTRUST has cut back its position across global equities.
“Every one of our portfolios have been overweight equities to the relative targets for some time. We feel the negative outcomes could quite heavily outweigh the positives that we see in front of us today,” continued Vogelzang.
Next, Vogelzang joined Rishaad Salamat and Bryan Curtis on the radio show Bloomberg Daybreak Asia where he took a deeper dive into the firm’s fixed income strategies, as well as insight into the firm’s defensive position.
“Negative sentiment, in particularly the global equity markets, is quite high,” said Vogelzang. “But what got our attention was when the Russian invasion occurred, the stock market opened down big that morning… By the end of the day, it closed up. And it opened up the next day, up two percent or so,” said Vogelzang. “That said to us that something is wrong here. The sentiment isn’t deep enough, its not scared enough. We haven’t seen the bottom yet and that’s when we began to take our action.”
