The Sanlam Global High Quality Fund outperformed the MSCI World Index during the month by 0.5%, with the fund gaining 3.3%.

The best performing stock this month was Tencen (+13.8%). Tencent has struggled this year for a couple of reasons. Firslty there has generally been a cautious view of the Chines market given the constant noise surrounding the trade war with Trump and the US. This has kept a lid on exuberance. Secondly, one of Tencent's larger segments is advertising, predominantly through its super-app. WeChat. This year has seen the emergence of a social rival, ByteDance, which has grown their user base significantly.

This has taken ad dollars away from Tencent. However this month the market is saying that it thinks these issues are overdone. Trade talks have been more encouraging in recent weeks and, in our view, Tencent operates in many segments that are more insulated from these talks than some of its rivals. We are also seeing some early signs of ByteDance facing some regulatory issues as the young company gets to grip with how to handle the Chines Communist Party. Other strong performers this moth include Imperial Brands (+12.5%) and Samsung (+11.7%). In terms of the laggards, Oracle (-5.4%) and Cognizant (-3.3%) struggled during the month. Oracle had their Q2 results which disappointed. We continue to wait for strong top line growth from the enterprise software business.