The S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) is having a bumpy start to the trading week this morning. The ASX 200 is currently down by 0.21%% at 7,244 points after a brief dive and rebound just after market open today. But one ASX 200 share is still very much in the red so far. That would be the Magellan Financial Group Ltd (ASX: MFG) share price.
Magellan shares are, at the time of writing, down a nasty 3.61% at $31.20 a share. Not only that, this ASX fund manager dipped as low as $30.15 a share earlier in the trading day. That's a new 52-week low for Magellan shares. It's also the lowest pricing this company has seen since early 2019.
So what's gone so wrong for Magellan today?
It's likely to do with the funds under management (FUM) update the company released to the markets before open this morning.
Magellan, as a fund manager, releases its FUM every month, including its specific inflows and outflows. Today's release covered the month of November.
Magellan share price slumps on FUM numbers
So Magellan told investors that its total FUM stood at $116.413 billion (as of 30 November). That's up 1.41% from the $114.8 billion the company recorded on 31 October.
Retail FUM decreased slightly over the month, falling from $30.31 billion on 31 October to $20.23 billion on 30 November. However, institutional FUM rose from $84.5 billion to $86.18 billion over the same period.
All three of Magellan's fund divisions saw rises. Global Equities rose from $85.14 billion to $86.27 billion. Infrastructure Equities was up from $19.97 billion to $20.45 billion, while Australian Equities rose from $9.69 billion to $9.7 billion.
Saying that, the Australian dollar had quite a fall between 31 October and 30 November. Magellan tells us that the Aussie was buying 75.11 US cents as of its October numbers, but had fallen to 70.9 US cents by November. As you can tell from the above figures, the vast majority of Magellan's FUM is invested in international assets, most of which would be priced in US dollars.
As such, it's very possible that on a constant currency basis, Magellan's FUM would have actually fallen over the month just gone, or at least not look quite as rosy as it does with the drop included.
This could be one of the reasons why investors seem to have reacted so negatively to this announcement this morning.
Whatever the real reason for investors' harsh reaction today, no doubt many of Magellan's investors will be disappointed.
At the current Magellan share price, this company has a market capitalisation of $5.79 billion, a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 21.6 and a trailing dividend yield of 6.77%
