What the Top Fund Portfolio Managers Are Buying and Selling Now

While not all fund managers are doing the same thing, most active managers have had a difficult time just beating the indexes, which is what they usually use as a measuring stick.

1) Current allocations to stocks are at the third highest level since the lows of March 2009. Some 58% are overweight to the asset class.

2) Most of the stock allocation increase from the fund managers is from increasing overweight to European stocks, which is now at 60%, the highest in the survey’s history.

3) The other big overweight position is Japan at 40%. The Jefferies team points out that allocations over the past five months have not been this high since January of 2008.

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4) Fund managers are reporting an 11% underweight in emerging markets.

5) In a very non-surprising data point, and one readers should be very cognizant of, fund managers are underweight bonds a net -54% of the respondents.

6) In sector allocation, the largest overweights from the fund managers are consumer discretionary, real estate, banks and technology.

7) The portfolio managers are underweight sectors that are no big surprise: energy, commodities and materials.

8) In the U.S. markets, the pharmaceutical and technology sectors are the biggest overweights. That is interesting as those are the two sectors that almost every Wall Street firm we cover has stressed as ones they are recommending to overweight. Insurance, utilities and consumer staples are the biggest underweighted sectors.

9) In a sign that could be bullish for domestic equities, for the first time since 2009, the majority of the fund portfolio managers think that the U.S. dollar is overvalued.

10) In a final, and perhaps most telling, data point, fund managers’ exposure to U.S. stocks has fallen to a very nervous seven-year low. That number has dropped from a 24% overweight as recently as January to a current 11% underweight in March. That is the lowest since January of 2008.

Again, it is important to stress that the bulk of active managers have underperformed the benchmarks. With that in mind, it is interesting to take a glimpse at what an overall sampling of the managers are thinking and doing now. Especially with a market that is by historic valuations, very expensive.

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