Expert Panel

A strong start to the year for smallcaps does not guarantee outperformance in 2026.

Sebastiaan Hooghiemstra and Gabriël Storm at Loyens & Loeff examine the latest EU-level guidance on Target Funds under ELTIF 2.0 and its implications for ELTIF managers and product structuring going forward.

The Belgian tax administration has further digitalized the procedure for filing the tax on collective investment institutions (CIV tax). In principle, the tax return must now be submitted electronically through the MyMinFin portal.

The Asian bond market continues to deepen, supported by local and international interest.

Finance is full of repetitive work, often done manually. Reconciliation, reporting, and various calculations to evaluate assets are part of daily life. But in recent years, the AI storm has arrived.

Investors continue to shun EUR cautious allocation funds as fixed income regained popularity.

Over the 12 months to February 2026, the US dollar weakened by 12.6 percent against the euro, a move mirrored across several emerging-markets currencies, including the Brazilian real, South African rand, Mexican peso and Malaysian ringgit. This currency shift has pushed managers in the Morningstar Global Bond – Diversified category toward local-currency emerging-markets debt to capture both rate differentials and currency appreciation.

Listed real estate has become one of the most conspicuous laggards in global markets. After four consecutive calendar years of underperformance against the MSCI World, valuations now sit below their historical median relative to broader equities, according to Cohen & Steers. For long-term allocators, the question now is whether this reset offers a cyclical entry point or a structural repricing.

The disruptive potential of AI has caused havoc among software companies in recent weeks.

Multi-asset benchmarks assume costless and frictionless implementation, setting a high bar for allocation funds to outperform after fees. Even so, these “one-stop-shop” solutions remain appealing for many investors.