fund manager views

Markets continue to climb the proverbial wall of worry and the S&P 500 index was back into record-setting mode in April.

Today we are seeing change in the political environment, investor priorities and market landscape at a faster pace than ever before.

The UK economy continues to grow. However, ongoing wrangling over our exit from Europe and broader domestic political uncertainty has seen growth expectations reduced to a rather uninspiring 1.2% in 2019, according to official forecasters.

The rhetoric over the US-China trade war has again increased, triggering the biggest fall in US stock prices since January.

Faced with ongoing uncertainty and volatility, global macroeconomic commentators are in two distinct camps: one that observes symptoms of recession and another that observes signs of a global recovery.

As we enter Q2, we see particular value in the hard currency and frontier market spaces within emerging market debt (EMD).

Having spoken to numerous market participants, we discern a number of areas of current concern.

Financial markets became scared at the end of last year that the US Federal Reserve's monetary tightening could precipitate the country's economy into recession.

Traditional sources of investment income are facing structural issues, while the alternative income sector is booming.

Japanese equities have been routinely shunned by global allocators for decades.