Feature

Recent history has been challenging for income-seeking investors.

For most of the world, the economic recovery from the Global Financial Crisis has been weak compared to previous cycles.

Japanese stocks have lagged their global peers so far this year, as uncertainty over US-China trade frictions and the impact on the global economy have clouded the outlook for corporate earnings.

Need for diverse portfolio return drivers

The worst case scenario for emerging market (EM) equities has started to unfold, turning a potentially positive outlook around by 180 degrees.

Bonds go down when equities go up, is the common perceived wisdom among investors.

Boris Johnson's arrival at Number 10 has done little to enhance UK investor confidence; he has wasted no time setting a collision course with the EU over his no-deal strategy, and members on the other side of the House of Commons.

If you had not been paying attention to financial markets for quite a few years and then – from this position of naivety – had looked at the eurozone, your likely conclusion would be that the region's equity bourses were offering tremendous value.

Over the past decade, we have endured the tired pessimism that still looms from the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

Views on US equities seem to neatly fall into two camps.