The spring has also warmed up the continuing education funds that show increases - voila! money

Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. An upward trend in April (Photo: Reuven Castro)

The spring season also brought the capital markets out of hibernation last April, which showed returns that continue those achieved a month earlier (March 2023), and led to the continued flowering of medium-term savings for all of us.

The ten largest advanced education funds in Israel examined by Walla! Silver in the general track gave their peers an average return of 1.6%, putting the average cumulative return since the beginning of the year at 2.54%.

For example, the Tel Aviv 125 and Tel Aviv 35 indices increased by about 31.1 percent in April (including March 6, which is the beginning of

box office activity for this month), and the main US indices such as the S&P500 and the Nasdaq increased by about 2.9 percent and about 1.7 percent, respectively, for the same period.

The study fund that yielded the highest return among the funds examined was that of Analyst Investment House, whose peers in the general track enjoyed an increase of 1.89% last April.

The yield of the Analyst's study fund is about 0.62% higher than that achieved by the last in the table – the study fund of the Harel insurance company, which yielded a return of 1.27% to its colleagues in the general track for the period examined (see table).

Study funds, April 2023 performance (Photo: Walla! system, none)

Noam Rokach, Chief Investment Officer of Analyst Investment House, told Walla! "Provident funds enjoyed an increase in equity markets during April, mainly from the one experienced on the American and Israeli stock exchanges on March 31.

The Israeli market believes that the legal reform will be passed by agreement, mainly in light of the S&P rating agency's failure to downgrade its credit rating, and has begun to fill in some of the short returns it has shown vis-à-vis international markets. Most of the increase was led by shares of second-tier companies (i.e., the Tel Aviv 90 Index, which increased by about 1.7 percent for the same period).

The markets are also beginning to price in the end of the cycle of interest rate increases, both worldwide and in Israel, which leads to yields on corporate bonds.

US markets also increased in the past month, continuing the trend they began experiencing last March, with an emphasis on the technology sector."

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Noam Rokach, VP Investments of Analyst Investment House (Photo: Alon Porat)

These increases contributed mainly to 'analyst' colleagues, and Rokach explains, "Our equity exposure was slightly higher than the other funds in the table, and increasing the corporate bond component of our investment portfolio since the beginning of the year helped the excess yields last April as well.

In addition, we are focused on the US market with excess weight in its share share, with an emphasis on the technology sector, and in recent months the big tech companies have presented corrections to the declines they experienced months earlier as investors returned to them in light of their relative strength vis-à-vis banks and energy companies,
which were a temporary refuge with the interest rate increases.

Looking ahead, the market expects that the real estate sector will continue to stand out positively as the markets recover, after suffering a blow due to the increase in interest rates, weakening purchases of residential homes, uncertainty as a result of the legal reform, and the discourse surrounding the exit of high-tech, and on the face of it it seems as if the bounce back has been released.

All of course under the assumption that the rate hike cycle is nearing an end, and the US market is already pricing it in and returning to the stock markets."

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