For those of you who don't know (a majority I imagine), I finished my studies at Paris-Dauphine a little over a year ago, before joining Monocle to participate in the company's development. I'm not sure if this digression into my personal life is of much interest to you, but rest assured there is a meaning behind it.  
 
As a former student of the university (the term is admittedly a bit pompous given my youth on the job market, I grant you), it was a great pleasure for me to come back at the end of this month of August to participate in an event that I appreciate very much: "The summer universities".  
 
I invite you to go there if you have the opportunity, the speakers are of great quality.  
 
What does this have to do with the news of the week on the markets? Here it is: during the conferences that took place, the points of view of the various professionals present (notably that of Mr Pascal Blanqué - former head of economic research at Crédit Agricole) converged towards a central point: inflation is a complex problem that is far from being confirmed - thus suggesting that we were not at the end of our difficulties and that the markets had a tendency to get too excited about a piece of news (July's slightly better than expected figures) whose optimism was, after all, only an appearance for the moment.  
 
The funny thing is that these conferences took place last Thursday, the day before a major speech by Jerome Powell at the Jackson Hole Consortium. And indeed, during his speech, the Fed boss mentioned the term "inflation" 45 times in less than 8 minutes, indicating that the fight was by no means over and had just begun.  
 
Does this indicate that interest rates will be raised by 50 basis points or 75 at the next Fed meeting? I don't know much about it to be honest...  
 
What is certain is that with the Shiller PE back above 30 and corporate earnings slowing (Nvidia's last Wednesday with Q2 operating income down to $500M from $2.4B the previous year is an example), the markets still seem to be in their bubble with respect to the global context.  
 
The recent volatility could wake them up.

Market and portfolio focus

Behaviour : The fund performed rather well, losing about 0.3% in a week when the markets (S&P 500) were losing about 5%. It is maintaining a cautious positioning (net equity exposure <10%) with a lot of cash (c. 55%) in order to be able to redeploy it to more attractive yield/valuation levels.

Lines: We returned to BASF (chemicals / 4% of the portfolio) given its very attractive dividend yield (at an all-time high and very well covered by operating figures) due to the recent setbacks in the share price because of the activity's dependence on gas (a risk that seems to us to be over-represented in the market's valuation). Other than that, there was little movement: we remain invested in our conviction stocks (Unilever, Intel, Pfizer, Meta, etc.).

Have a great week,

Max