Highly unusually, investors in the Basque country and the rest of Spain were more sceptical about European equities than their peers in the rest of Europe when we last polled them in December. However, the dip in appetite appears to have been short-lived.
Though US presidential elections are approaching fast and Brexit uncertainty is still riding high, China is the biggest macroeconomic risk right now, according to fund selectors attending the local Expert Investor forum in Barcelona last week.
Here you can see a selection of photos taken at Expert Investor Spain forum, held in Barcelona on 27 October 2016.
Bankia’s head of funds-of-funds, Alvaro Martín Sauto, explains why he believes we should not be paying more than eight basis points for an actively managed government bond fund, and talks about his quest to get clients to accept more volatility.
Spanish fund buyers embarked on an unprecedented multi-asset fund buying in 2014 and 2015. This year, however, multi-asset funds have seen net outflows as local investors de-risk again.
Barcelona’s investors are remarkably unanimous in their fixed income allocation. Almost all of them are overweight short-duration bonds and eight in 10 interviewees are planning to decrease their allocation to long-duration European sovereign debt.
Barcelona’s fund buyers had been bullish about European equities almost by default for the past four years. But political instability across Europe has dented their appetite. Global emerging market equities are their new darling.
Fund buyers expect returns from their equity portfolio to be significantly lower over the next five years. However, they still expect equities to outperform bonds by a considerable margin.
Here you can see a selection of photos taken at Expert Investor Spain forum, held in Madrid on 14 June 2016.
Markets have been trading more or less sideways for a while now, but fund managers and fund buyers alike are preparing for the next downturn. And Brexit could be the trigger.
2015 saw Spanish investors breaking with their long-standing habit of buying ever more bonds, with bond funds seeing net outflows for 10 out of 12 months last year. However, as government bond yields once again approach record lows, they have reversed course.
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.
