The Infusive Consumer Alpha Global Leaders Fund (Class A USD) returned -6.3% in March (net of fees). Our YTD performance is -6.2%

Despite the drawdown in markets (March was the worst month for the S&P 500 in 3.5 years), Infusive was one of the best performers (7th percentile) vs 364 peers.

Three forces drove the month. First, the Iran conflict and the disruption around the Strait of Hormuz created an energy shock that pushed investors to reprice inflation, growth and the likely path of policy. Second, that macro shock hit precisely when markets were already becoming less forgiving of AI-related capital intensity, software risk and crowded growth positioning. Third, the combination fed directly into consumer, digital and platform equities through margin pressure, weaker confidence and broader de-risking. The result was not a collection of isolated stock moves, but a broad drawdown across the portfolio’s key sleeves.

Cross-Asset Signals

Cross-asset markets made the mechanism of the selloff clearer.

Oil was the central transmission channel: once crude moved sharply higher, markets quickly shifted from thinking about soft-landing resilience to worrying about inflation persistence, margin squeeze and policy constraint.

That showed up in a firmer US dollar, higher front-end yields and a flatter curve as expectations for easing were pared back. It also showed up in weaker Asian currencies and tighter financial conditions more broadly, particularly in regions most exposed to imported energy.

Commodity markets therefore mattered not only because they moved, but because they changed the lens through which investors viewed the consumer: energy was no longer just a geopolitical story, but a direct threat to affordability, sentiment and input costs.

Credit and private-credit stress did not yet point to a systemic event, but they did reinforce the sense that liquidity was becoming more selective and that investors were reducing exposure to lower-visibility risk.

Top & Bottom Contributors (March)

The positive side of the table was thin, which is itself an important signal. BYD, Pinterest and Netflix were less evidence of a broad risk-on rebound than pockets of relative resilience inside a difficult tape. BYD stood out because the EV / hard-tech side of the China and EM basket held up better than consumer-internet exposure during the month, while Pinterest and Netflix simply avoided the worst of the derating that hit the most crowded mega-cap platform and software-linked names.

Coinbase and MercadoLibre being the next names on the table also matters. It suggests March produced very few genuine winners: once you move beyond BYD, Pinterest and Netflix, the remaining “top contributors” were really names that lost less than the rest of the portfolio rather than delivering meaningful upside. In other words, the leaderboard itself shows just how broad and unforgiving the selloff became.

The bottom contributors tell a clearer story about what the market was trying to sell. Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft sat directly in the line of fire from AI-capex anxiety, crowded positioning and weaker confidence in the near-term return on very large investment programmes. Sea added a second leg of pressure through weaker sentiment toward Asian and consumer-internet exposure, where risk appetite was already fragile.

Procter & Gamble was caught in the broader staples de-risking and concern about cost pass-through.

Outlook

From here, the key question is not whether March was painful — it was — but which of its drivers prove temporary and which become persistent.

We are watching three things most closely. First, whether the energy shock fades or remains embedded in oil, transport and inflation expectations. Second, whether central banks are forced to stay restrictive for longer as a result. Third, whether markets continue to rotate away from long-duration AI and platform exposure toward businesses with clearer cash-flow visibility and stronger self-funding characteristics.

If oil stabilises and geopolitical risk eases, some of the March repricing could reverse quickly, particularly given how defensive positioning became by month-end. But if energy pressure persists, consumer-facing sectors may continue to face a more difficult mix of demand pressure, margin risk and valuation compression.

In that environment, the most important distinction may be between businesses that can self-fund growth, protect margins and preserve demand and those that remain more reliant on benign rates, abundant risk appetite or large incremental capital commitments. We believe discipline around quality, balance-sheet strength and risk management remains especially important in that backdrop.