Jurgen Vluijmans

Sustainability will be the starting point for Quintet’s discretionary mandates, says James Purcell (photo), the new head of sustainable management at Quintet Group, in an interview with Investment Officer.

 The prices of European banking stocks have fallen to their lowest level in more than 30 years. The banks are weighing on a further recovery of the European indices, which have too few ‘asset light’ business models.

Until 30 September, the return of the European banking index stood at -43.66%. Over the past three years, the return is -24.39% and over the past five years it’s -13.36%.

Investors should increase risk as some traditional safe havens are losing their shine, Robeco says in its five-year outlook titled ‘A Brave Real World’. Investment Officer spoke with Peter van der Welle, strategist in Robeco’s Global Macro team, about the asset manager’s outlook.

It’s less than six weeks to the US presidential elections. Capital Group has made a few rules of thumb for investors to give some guidance.

In 2002 Luca Pesarini (photo) and Arnoldo Valsangiacomo launched their first Ethna-AKTIV fund, at a time when multi-asset funds were not yet commonplace. In 2010 they founded ETHENEA Independent Investors, headquartered in Luxembourg. Upon its 10-year anniversary, Investment Officer had an exclusive interview with them.

The Fed’s announcement last Thursday that it will now target an ‘average’ inflation rate of 2% is a huge game changer for investors and asset allocators, says Philippe Gijsels, head strategist at BNP Paribas Fortis.

Financial market bubbles are quite concentrated, we noted recently. But more and more market segments seem to be overheating. Government bonds, on the other hand, strongly disagree with the stock markets.

An anecdotal example of this bubble-forming is the price of wood (lumber), which has risen even faster than the Nasdaq since the beginning of this year. Just take a look at the graph below:

Central banks and governments around the world are once again engaged in a ‘currency devaluation’ contest. The US dollar has been on a sharp downward trend in recent weeks. This has had a significant impact on financial and real assets.

The chart below, which we borrowed from Hong Kong investor Puru Saxena and goes back all the way to 1980, suggests the dollar indeed is on a long-term downtrend.

La qualité, et pas la croissance, est le vrai facteur de différentation dans les marchés, déclare Adrien Bommelaer, gestionnaire de portefeuille chez le boutique asset manager français, La Financière de L’Echiquier (LFDE), dans un podcast.

While everyone is watching the main US stock indices break records day after day thanks to FAMANG stocks, the gold price also keeps creeping higher towards $1800 per ounce. Many investors remain sceptical, as they struggle to value gold. But there’s a lot to say for the gold rally to continue.