Davos’s Global Elite Are Laggards in Stock-Market Performance

(Bloomberg) -- The global 1% once again have ascended the Swiss Alps to breathe the rarefied air in Davos, but in the stock market they’re anything but elite.

An equally weighted portfolio of 436 publicly traded companies identified by Bloomberg as represented at the conference in 2019 underperformed the S&P 500 Index by about 10 percentage points since the delegates last met. It also did worse than the Stoxx Europe 600 and a global basket of shares.

Part of the problem is that having a vast concentration of wealth tends to attract those in the business of steering money. Banks and other financial companies were overrepresented at the conference, accounting for more than a quarter of the portfolio, and globally they have lagged the broader market.

There were also more miners than one might expect, while technology companies, the best-performing industry over the past year, also were among the most under-represented at the conference compared to the S&P 500 Equal Weighted Index. Consumer discretionary and health-care firms were conspicuous in their absence.

The companies represented also have a more international slant, with the U.S. and India representing the biggest contingent and Japan, the U.K. and Germany rounding out the top five.

The relative dearth of Chinese firms (they don’t make the top 10) is explained by the fact that many aren’t publicly traded.

In fact, the global footprints of the conference attendees may give the delegates their perfect scapegoat. Their worst performance occurred in May and in July, when trade-war rhetoric was at the worst. They may have had a word with U.S. President Donald Trump, who attended this year.

--With assistance from Simon Kennedy and Jeff Green.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eddie van der Walt in London at evanderwalt@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kristine Aquino at kaquino1@bloomberg.net, Phil Serafino

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