European and Italian fund selectors are also looking at alternative and absolute return strategies to diversify portfolios.
or the coming months, European equities and US inflationlinked securities are at the top of the preferences of Italian fund selectors. In contrast, corporate high yield bonds and core European bonds collect more indications for a reduction in allocations. Moreover, looking at the funds to be favored, absolute return products gain the peak of preferences among Italian fund selectors, followed by unconstrained funds and ETFs (page 7). MondoInvestor have also contacted some European financial professionals to have their outlook for Global markets. According to them, in the equity markets there is yet value to be played in the coming months, despite the expected increase in interest rates and the coming back of volatility are bringing European managers to look with more and more attention to alternative and absolute return strategies. What is clear from an economic point of view is that Global growth remains strong, especially in the short term. But the increased correlation among traditional asset classes in recent years have driven to new asset allocation models: more dynamic and more diversified.
Focusing on liquid alternative funds, Italians continue to remain the largest investors in this segment of market, followed by the British and French, German and Spanish investors. Moreover, institutional investors now hold the largest share of the industry at the European level and they also prevail in the Italian market, reversing the trend of recent years, when the retail clientele dominated. For the near future, furthermore, according to 61.1% of the asset managers interviewed, the institutional clientele will drive the flows.