We have a quarrel something.

Right.

Following the city of Private Board of Economic Commissioners meeting.

Um supports by four six.

Chairman Mayor Smiley.

Ish absent to Maria?

Private.

City Treasure Huston.

Present.

Councilwoman Ryan is absent.

Mr.

Costello.

Absolutely, Mr.

Hirsch.

Mr.

President, we absolutely have forum.

So you're out of and one performance announcement.

I'm handed over to Julian Green.

Um we are going to review start as we always do actually on page one of the report titled Sydney Province Employee Returning System Investment Performance August 31st, 2026.

And phase one is just a snapshot of the market and economically finding the through the end of the house.

A lot of that was because uh corporate profits uh reported by public trade companies in the US for the second quarter of 2026, we're actually on 53% viewer of the year, which is pretty incredible.

So there's very good profit news, which more or less offset uh the tougher news in terms of the conflict with Iran, high energy prices, concerns about interest rates and the bond market for the bond market uh very much front and center today as we speak uh in September 24th.

So the bottom line is in the for the through the first eight months of calendar year, uh equity returns, the returns that they the equity indexes that the retirement system is invested against uh range anywhere from 14.4% for the SP 500 to 17.4% for small gap stocks that's who Russell 2000.

Uh 20.2% my problems for the rest of 2000, I should say 13.1% the SP 500 uh through through the August and international stocks were also positive.

Subsequently, uh a little bit of backtracking and small cap stocks, uh large cap stocks have been favorable.

Uh if we think about interest rates, interest rates very much in the crisp energy prices, uh outstanding government debt being focused.

Uh one good part of it is that one of the losses that iron yields uh 30 year treasure yields uh reach its highest level, I believe since 2004 uh today over 5.4% because of the strong funds.

So notwithstanding all these challenges would ship in tougher bonds resulted in a flat return to negative return for bonds when bond yields go up, bond prices go down, uh good environment for stocks to be in bottom.

And if we go to the report itself, uh think is moving.

Uh we could see that the market value for the retirement system portfolio at the end of the month was around up just a little bit here, 690.8 million and four columns that we can see in that longest investment environment or market environment that I just described, uh the return was 1.8%.

And that really was from equities which returned over two percent in your portfolio as well as hedge funds, which are also contributed, whereas bonds are more looks flat.

If you look six columns to the left hand side, you see year to date return.

This is counting your thing.

Of course, 10.3% trimmed the benchmark index.

But if you look one uh one column for the left, you can see for the quarter to date uh in plain English the last three three months.

You've actually had some outperformance.

So early in the year, a little bit of underperformance.

Some of that is persisted with two of your public equity managers.

Uh will be co small cap value, sometimes called Boston partners, mid-cap value.

But I will point out that uh returns have been in the teams.

You can see their returns, uh, world goes returns uh at uh the middle part in the bottom uh of the page year today, they've been the techniques, but they trail the benchmark index.

Importantly for those two firms, since you hired them, uh they have outperformed their benchmark index method fees.

Public equities, and I left uh Peter speak to the financial reconciliation as well as the allocations, but I shouldn't make the preliminary real point at the end of the period.

Public equities were approximately 66.9% of the total portfolio, the return for the total public equity portfolio was 14%, and in line with the market environment, the small cap stock portfolio was the best performance of asset.

Go to the next page, uh page four.

Uh go to fixed income, fixed income at the end of the large reporting period account for 18.6 percent of total portfolio assets as I mentioned before, tough environment for fixed income extra is a modestly positive term of two tenths of percent in the month.

Uh the return for the year to date a tenth of a percent.

So again, if you think about the bond market, uh, the yields on a bond that one of your bond managers, let's say we're sales buys today, might be around five percent if it's in line of the market.

But the dilemma is that when yields go up, the price goes down.

So what you've had is the decline bond prices more or less offsetting uh those.

The good news is those yields are meaningful going forward uh in terms of providing uh extra return.

And finally, on uh page five, you uh wrap up the launch out of this report.

Uh we can see the hedge fund portfolio only seven percent of assets.

Uh the return for the hedge fund portfolio just uh highlight year to date six columns in nine percent.

Uh some outperformance there also contributing to uh outperformance of the last three months.

And then you can see cash, seven and a half percent of the portfolio.

I'll let Peter speak to that.

That's from contributions uh to the fund.

Uh, interestingly enough, with the Fed hiking interest rates uh again and with interest rates being sticky on the upside along with inflation, contrary to what a lot of uh economists uh and market launchers would have expected, say six months ago or 12 months ago when they were expecting rates to come down.

Uh, they would have expected cash to also be yielding uh a more modest number.