Global Fund Update – March 2026
Global stocks were higher in February, rising around 2.5% in Sterling terms. The Goshawk Global Fund was up 2.8% over the same period.
The American and Israeli military incursion into Iran came shortly after the month’s end, but markets had already moved to a more defensive stance in recent weeks. In addition, the oil price had already moved off recent lows before rising strongly at the beginning of March.
Stocks & Portfolio Moves
We have made a number of changes to our portfolios in recent weeks to improve balance, including increasing our weighting in oil by adding a position in Exxon Mobil alongside our existing positions in oil services company SLB (formerly called Schlumberger) and YPF. After struggling for most of 2025, in recent months, SLB’s performance has been strong, rising from a low of close to $30 to above $50 following strong quarterly results. Unlike SLB, which is now one of our largest holdings, YPF is our smallest position at just 0.5% of the Global Fund portfolio, reflecting the higher risk nature of investing in Argentina. However, we see a terrific opportunity in YPF as it transitions to a “pure shale” company via a substantial investment of $5.5billion while divesting its conventional assets.
We invested in Exxon Mobil in early February as a high quality integrated oil company that has shown itself capable of generating good profits and cashflow even when the oil price is significantly depressed. In 2025, Exxon made profits of $28.8billion, generated operating cash flow of over $50billion and returned over $37billion to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks, increasing its dividend for the 43rd consecutive year.
We also added new positions in EQT and Equinix in our US weighting in February, which had fallen to around 47% of total assets, with these additions moving the portfolio back towards 50%. We also added modestly to our position in Netflix as it announced at the end of the month that it was withdrawing its bid for Warner Bros Discovery, avoiding a bidding war with Paramount Skydance, which we believe showed strong financial discipline.
Our new position in EQT increases our weighting in the commodities sector by introducing low cost US natural gas exposure to our portfolios. EQT is the only large scale integrated natural gas producer in the US, with assets in the Appalachian region and annuity like midstream assets which aid the company’s cash flow in times of low commodity prices. EQT has ambitions to expand globally and recently signed a 20 year SPA with Commonwealth LNG that adds materially to the company’s export capability.
Equinix is the owner of the world’s largest data centre network, with a presence across six continents and 273 locations in 36 countries. Recent results showed monthly recurring revenue up 10% and annualised gross bookings up 27% for the full year 2025, which actually accelerated to 42% in the final quarter. Management showed their considerable confidence in the company’s prospects by raising their dividend by 10%, the 11th year in a row that Equinix has increased its payout to shareholders. CEO Adaire Fox-Martin commented that “demand for our solutions has never been higher, as demonstrated by accelerated growth in both bookings and recurring revenue, and we are confident in our plan to deliver robust revenue and Adjusted Funds From Operations per share growth in 2026 … Equinix plays an essential role helping businesses connect and manage increasingly distributed AI, cloud and networking infrastructure”.
We have increased the defensive part of our portfolio by adding a position in Colgate-Palmolive at the start of the month, the US based consumer staples business. Colgate is a leading global toothpaste brand and has other dependable assets in home and personal care, including exposure to a strong pet food brand in Hill’s pet nutrition.
To accommodate a more defensive stance with a higher weighting in commodities, we have modestly reduced our weightings in Microsoft, IBM, Accenture and Amazon while exiting our positions in Salesforce and Adyen. The stock market has become highly concerned about the future prospects of the software sector due to threats from AI and this has led to a major derating of businesses in this part of the market. While it may be too early to be sure of the ultimate implications of what has become known as the “SaaSpocalypse”, we decided to cut our position in Salesforce as we have become increasingly concerned about the threat posed to its business model from new low cost AI driven CRM competitors.
Japanese equities had a strong month in February, rising over 10% after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was re-elected with a resounding majority, which effectively gave her a strong mandate to carry out substantial pro-growth reforms. We believe Japan has been substantially under owned by global institutional investors for many years despite a substantial improvement in corporate governance that has led to improved shareholder returns. We have been running a considerable overweight position in the Japanese market for many years and this is now beginning to pay off, no longer held back by the considerable weakness of the Yen. A number of our Japanese stocks are now performing strongly, helped by positive individual company results and backed by valuation discounts, notably to US peers. There is an increasing tailwind for physical AI companies in the robotics and factory automation area that is benefiting stocks like Keyence, SMC and Yaskawa, while in the banking sector, SMFG has risen following expectations of further interest rate hikes by the Bank of Japan. Mitsubishi Electric is our largest Japanese holding and is benefitting from continued improvement in its portfolio of businesses, particularly from its exposure to the defence industry.
Our portfolio has significant exposure to increasing defence spending, and Rolls-Royce, which has been one of the best performing stocks in our portfolio in recent years, produced yet another excellent set of results and set of impressive new targets, pushing the shares to new all-time highs. After such a robust performance, we are now placing this position under review, although we acknowledge that the targets that management have set for 2028 still look to us to be conservative.
Outlook
Despite the uncertainties from Iran to technology, our selected investments seem to be faring well and the balance we keep in our portfolio construction seems to have helped us avoid most of the pitfalls. We continue to expect good investment returns this year even if we prefer a defensive positioning.
Goshawk Asset Management
Data source: Goshawk Asset Management, Bloomberg
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