Welcome to the first quarter 2025 review. And what a quarter it's been. Animal spirits were alive and well throughout the quarter with the bulls taking charge in the first six weeks while bears woke early from hibernation to remind us about the challenges of disrupting global trade.
The value of diversification within a portfolio for managing risk stood out in this quarter. The Matco global equity fund has invested both domestically and internationally and our international exposure has generated positive returns for the fund helping us offset the pullback within the US portion of our portfolio. Within the US portion, our investment process looking for growth at a reasonable price helped us weather this correction falling less than the broad US indices.
We are excited about the businesses that we own and we see some growth potential within their underlying companies despite the tariff news. Over the first quarter, the series O for global equity declined 85 basis points. In the last year, the fund gained 4.4%. And in the last 5 years, the fund has returned an annualized 14.42% per year.
Since the end of March, we've gotten some additional updates on the trade policies of the Trump administration. The tariffs are a tax. It's bad policy. It didn't work in 1930 and it's unlikely to work today. We see this as an opportunity. However, there's some amazing businesses that are now 10-20% less expensive than they were just a few days ago.
Putting risk management first. We are thoughtfully rebalancing the portfolio, investing cash inflows, trimming some defensive winners, and adding to some strong growth names for the next cycle. Fortinet, for example, is a strong cyber security business that maintains an attractive growth profile despite the tariff challenges.
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