Artemis’ global equity funds have significantly outperformed their benchmarks over recent months, each doing so by looking beyond the US-heavy indices that dominate the global equity universe.
Market capitalisation-weighted indices are built to reward momentum, allocating a growing share of investors’ capital to yesterday's winners. After years of US exceptionalism, the most popular global benchmarks now reflect a deeply US-centric world view and investors who cling closely to those weightings risk neglecting the fundamentals of diversification and the importance of starting valuations, in Artemis’ view.
The asset management house takes a different approach. Within its global equity range, Artemis Global Income and Artemis SmartGARP® funds both conclude that opportunities are broader than benchmarks imply and that valuations matter. They arrive there by different routes: macro-informed, bottom-up stock analysis in the case of Global Income; a systematic, factor-driven process in SmartGARP.
Below, we look at how three of Artemis’ funds translated that conviction into performance over the 12 months to the end of February.
Artemis Global Income: When regime change pays off
The Artemis Global Income fund returned 59% over the 12-month period, against 16.3% from the MSCI AC World index and making it the best performer in the IA Global Equity Income sector. Overlapping with this period, 2025 was the fund's best calendar year since its 2010 launch, on both an absolute and relative basis.
Managers Jacob de Tusch-Lec and James Davidson have spent several years positioning the portfolio around what they call ‘regime change’: a structural shift towards higher interest rates, indebted governments, deglobalisation and persistent geopolitical tension. Over recent months, this approach has paid off.
Performance of fund vs sector and benchmark over 12 months to 28 Feb 2026
Source: FE Analytics. Total return in sterling.
Banks were the largest contributor to outperformance over the period under consideration, driven by European institutions benefiting from strong profitability, better-than-expected eurozone growth and scaled-back expectations of rate cuts. Many delivered total cash returns to shareholders above 10% of their market capitalisation through dividends and buybacks, and individual holdings including Commerzbank and Greek bank NBG added meaningfully to relative returns.
Defence was next. Rheinmetall and Hanwha Aerospace both made strong contributions, supported by a wave of government spending pledges triggered by renewed pressure on NATO members to fund their own security. The managers took profits in both names after exceptional gains but remain convinced of the structural argument: decades of underinvestment in defence, they believe, will not be reversed quickly.
Samsung Electronics was the top individual stock contributor, driven by an AI-related surge in memory chip demand. Siemens Energy and Kinross Gold also featured prominently: the former benefiting from soaring orders for gas turbines as the energy needs of data centres accelerated; the latter from a near-65% rise in the gold price as fiscal stress and de-dollarisation drove demand for hard assets.
The main costs of the approach were not holding Alphabet and Nvidia, and a broader underweight to semiconductors, which detracted from relative returns as US mega-cap technology recovered strongly after April 2025’s tariff shock.
These are the structural consequence of a fund that trades at roughly 40% below the MSCI AC World on a price-to-earnings basis and carries twice the dividend yield. “We think the case for a fund with a flexible and pragmatic approach that looks so different to peers is as strong as ever,” the managers said.
Artemis SmartGARP Global Equity: Looking past the consensus
The Artemis SmartGARP Global Equity fund returned 44% in the 12 months to 28 February 2026, against 16.3% from the MSCI AC World, with stock selection accounting for nearly all of the outperformance. This put the fund in the top quartile of the IA Global sector.
Manager Raheel Altaf runs the fund using Artemis’ proprietary SmartGARP process, which identifies undervalued companies with improving earnings and positive analyst revisions while removing behavioural bias from the investment process. A deliberate underweight to the US, running at roughly 23 percentage points below benchmark weight, and a significant overweight to emerging markets, provided much of the structural tailwind.
Performance of fund vs sector and benchmark over 12 months to 28 Feb 2026
Source: FE Analytics. Total return in sterling.
Materials were the largest contributing sector. CMOC Group, the world's largest cobalt producer, and China Hongqiao, its aluminium equivalent, both performed strongly as commodity demand from electrification and infrastructure collided with years of supply underinvestment. Altaf frames these holdings through the same supply-chain lens as the Global Income managers: in a world where governments are competing for resource independence, owning the largest producers at undemanding valuations made sense.
Technology hardware was also a significant contributor. Samsung Electronics and Asia Vital Components, which makes cooling products for CPUs and data centre hardware, both feature in the AI ‘picks and shovels’ trade: gaining exposure to artificial intelligence through the hardware enablers rather than the hyperscalers themselves. Alphabet also contributed positively despite widespread market scepticism about its AI positioning, with the manager pointing to its proprietary chip development as evidence that investors had underestimated it.
As Altaf noted at year end: “The reappraisal of the global equity universe over 2025 benefited our positioning but did not diminish the opportunity in the fund as we start 2026. Extremes remain, risks are elevated in certain areas and the case for balance within your global equity exposure has only grown.”
Artemis SmartGARP Global Emerging Markets Equity: Discipline rewarded as leadership broadened
Over the same period, Altaf’s Artemis SmartGARP Global Emerging Markets Equity fund returned 51.2%, against 40.5% from the MSCI Emerging Markets index. Like the other funds in this article, it is in the top quartile of its peer group – the IA Global Emerging Markets sector.
“We achieved this outperformance without a heavy reliance on the most popular themes, reinforcing the benefits of diversification and valuation discipline as market leadership broadened,” the manager said.
Performance of fund vs sector and benchmark over 12 months to 28 Feb 2026
Source: FE Analytics. Total return in sterling.
Samsung Electronics was again the top individual contributor, joined by CMOC Group and China Hongqiao, whose gains reflected tightening commodity supply and rising industrial demand.
Wiwynn, a Taiwanese infrastructure provider serving hyperscale data centres, also contributed, as investors began distinguishing between AI-adjacent businesses with genuine earnings power and those running on expectation alone.
The fund's underweight to TSMC and SK hynix, two of the benchmark's best-performing semiconductor names, was the main drag on relative returns. Both rallied sharply as enthusiasm for chips surged in the second half of the year.
Global investors remain structurally under-allocated to emerging markets even after their strong performance in 2025. With attractive valuations, rising earnings forecasts and wide dispersion across markets, the manager believes a consistent, process-driven approach is well suited to what comes next.
“The recovery in emerging markets is firmly underway, supported by monetary easing, resilient growth and improving earnings momentum,” the manager argued.