Investment Officer Luxembourg

Prime Minister Takaichi’s clear reflation policy is making Japan attractive to investors once more, even though the policy rate, at 0.75 percent, stands at its highest level in thirty years. The panic surrounding the unwinding of the yen carry trade, which caused global turmoil two years ago, now appears to have definitively faded into the background.

The S&P500 is virtually unchanged this year, but beneath the surface the US equity market is moving more than it has in years. More than one fifth of all stocks in the index have already risen or fallen by more than 20 percent this year. The gainers are clearly in the majority: about two out of three. Yet you do not see that reflected in the index itself. How is that possible?

Private market fund managers are entering 2026 with record fundraising confidence, and much of that expansion is being engineered out of Luxembourg, according to Carne Group. The Grand Duchy has become the operational nerve centre for European private capital, hosting the majority of Europe’s ELTIFs and an expanding ecosystem of third-party management companies. Yet as assets surge and semi-liquid structures multiply, Carne’s survey finds that institutional investors are sending a firm signal: growth will only be tolerated if governance, valuation discipline and liquidity management meet a significantly higher bar.

The Federal Reserve has little appetite to cut interest rates in the near term. Minutes of the January meeting show policymakers are increasingly concerned that inflation could stay above the 2 percent target for longer than expected. Markets might have to reprice their expectations, economists say.

Wealthy families are no longer anchored to a single country, and neither are their assets. As heirs disperse and capital flows across jurisdictions, succession planning is shifting from domestic estate structuring to cross-border patrimonial engineering, a transition that is quietly reshaping Luxembourg’s role in European wealth management.

Since Trump’s reelection as president of the United States, the world has been on edge. Geopolitical tensions are dominating the markets, and the role of the dollar is once again under discussion. Still, I find it difficult to translate that into the idea that this is the moment for the euro to step out of the greenback’s shadow. There are simply too many loose ends.

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 European ETF market grew in January by a record 46.9 billion euro. In the shadow of that growth, a price war is taking place: mainstream ETFs are now being offered with an expense ratio of 0.03 percent. Will Europe soon welcome the “free” ETF, as in the US?