Britons stunned the world on the 23rd of June 2016 by voting to leave the European Union after 43 years of mostly troubled marriage. However, freedom comes at a price. Robeco’s chief economist Léon Cornelissen assesses the likely impact of Brexit on the UK economy.
While markets could remain complacent and expensive for some time to come, recession risk is rising, says asset manager Robeco. Fidelity is also increasingly cautious, expecting “the longest equity bull market since World War II” to end within 18 months.
US president Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement may result in securities issued by the US government becoming ineligible for ESG investors, experts say. But ESG fund managers are reluctant to disengage.
European investors have turned positive on emerging market debt again in January after two months of net outflows, reports Blackrock.
Many European investors have been reducing the duration of their bond portfolios following the spike in bond yields at the end of 2016. But they have been calling the end of the 30-year bond bull market too quickly, believes David Zahn, head of European fixed income at Franklin Templeton Investments.
ECB president Mario Draghi conspicuously avoided the B-word when he held a speech in Portugal last week. This may well be because he has yet to find an answer to the problems the vote has thrown up with regards to the execution of the central bank’s asset purchase programme.
Recent reports from those favouring Britain to stay in the EU suggest a Brexit of any sort would be severely damaging to the UK economy. We assess what will be in store for investors if it happens, and how to Brexit-proof your portfolios.
The Robeco Global Total Return Bond fund (formerly known as Robeco Rorento) combines the two most important qualities Alvaro Martín Sauto, head of funds-of-funds at Bankia, looks for in a fixed income fund: it can allocate flexibly to various asset classes, but prioritises limiting drawdowns over maximising returns.
In this video interview, Jan Sytze Mosselaar, portfolio manager quantitative equities at Robeco, explains why he prefers ranking stocks based on several factors over using a mean-variance optimisation process.
Low volatility stocks lose their defensive characteristics when rates go up and markets are under stress, fund managers told the audience at Expert Investor Norway last week. Is this a risk which could seriously unsettle markets, after the huge inflows into low volatility strategies in the past years?
Mifid II is, even before implementation, already triggering plenty of unease amongst Europe’s asset management industry.
As alternative beta products become available to smaller investors, what are the potential benefits and pitfalls of the approach? By Will Jackson
