The Macro Backdrop
Donald Trump's success in the US election was the major story of Q4 2024. His presidency and policies have been widely predicted to be inflationary, due to the likelihood of high tariffs and lower taxes, reinforcing expectations that interest rates will stay elevated for longer. Whilst this unsettled bond investors, equity markets in the U.S surged at the end of the year. Other markets around the world had mixed reactions, with Japan delivering solid returns, whilst Europe, Asia and the UK were much more subdued.
Looking ahead, investors are likely to continue to closely monitor developments in corporate earnings, interest rate decisions, and political events, all of which repeatedly demonstrated their ability to drive sharp and immediate market reactions throughout 2024.
Key Takeaways
Views by Investment Outcome
Capital accumulation managed to retain the top spot with 39.6% of views, but only just. Income came in a very close second with 37.5%. Interestingly, they both saw declines in the number of searches, from 45.9% and 42.6%, respectively, last quarter. It was searches for capital preservation outcomes that saw the biggest increase, from 6.6% to 18.8% in Q4. Inflation protection searches went down slightly to 4.2% from 4.9%.
Views by asset class
Equity searches topped the leaderboard again with 59.4% of searches, up slightly from Q3 2024. Multi-asset searches moved to second place with 20.6% from 17.3% last quarter.
Fixed income dropped to third place with 18.2%, while alternatives saw an increase from 0.4% to 1.8%.
Views by sector
IA Global stayed at the top of the leaderboard. It garnered 20.9% of views, while IA UK All Companies came in second with 10.0% of searches, both up slightly from the previous quarter. In third place came IA Mixed Investment 20-60% Shares, which saw a large increase in searches to take it into the top three for sectoral views in Q4, and attracted 8.6% of views overall.
Closely behind was IA Sterling Strategic Bond, which also saw an increase in its searches from 5.5% to 7.9%. IA Targeted Absolute Return, which was in joint third last quarter, dropped to fifth with 5.3% of views, down from 8.0% of all searches in Q3.
Top views by fund house
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Havelock (13.4%)
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Aegon Asset Management (5.7%)
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Jupiter Asset Management (5.5%)
Top views by fund
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Havelock Global Select Fund (16.8%)
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Aegon’s Diversified Monthly Income Fund (4.6%)
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Jupiter’s Merlin Growth Portfolio (3.0%)
Responsible Investing
Royal London Sustainable World Trust and Wellington's Global Impact Bond fund came in joint first with 4.7%. Last quarter, M&G’s Positive Impact fund came in first. In third place in Q4 2024, was Edentree’s Responsible And Sustainable Short Dated Bond fund with 4.2% of views.
Passive investing
The leaderboard saw a change at the top for passive strategy searches. Coming in first was Fidelity’s Index World fund with 7.4% of views. Fidelity also held second place with the Fidelity Index US fund, which garnered 5.5% of all searches. In third place was last quarter’s second place holder, Legal & General All Stocks Gilt Index - which was also a previous top spot holder in Q2 2024 - with 5.1% of views.
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