Investment Insights

Long-term investors may measure their horizons in decades, but performance can be measured every day. Could the way investment success is evaluated encourage shorter-term behaviour?

For most investors, uncertainty is something to be reduced wherever possible. Research seeks to answer unanswered questions, financial models forecast future outcomes, and risk management aims to minimise unexpected events. Greater certainty is generally viewed as a positive.

For most investors, the point at which a securities trade settles attracts little attention. The investment decision appears to be complete when the order is executed, and the price is displayed in the confirmation. Behind that transaction, however, cash and securities still have to move between asset managers, brokers, custodians, clearing houses and central securities depositories.

After more than a decade of ultra-low interest rates, investors are increasingly asking whether capital has entered a fundamentally different era, and what that means for markets, businesses and long-term investment decisions.

For much of the past two decades, investors have become accustomed to central banks communicating with unprecedented transparency.

For decades, the investment industry has pursued a remarkably simple objective: build a better portfolio. Every generation of investors has been offered new tools, new models and new frameworks designed to improve returns, reduce risk and allocate capital more efficiently. 

UK investors are quietly reassessing long-term investing, not because the principles have failed, but because the market environment around them has changed.
For years, “set and forget” investing felt less like a strategy and more like common sense: build the portfolio, stay diversified, ignore the noise, and let time do the work.

Many investors correctly identify the next big trend. Far fewer profit from it.
Being directionally right is only part of the equation, because markets reward outcomes relative to expectations.

Everyone wants liquid access to private markets, but few are asking what happens when that liquidity is tested.
Private markets have always carried a certain mystique. Access is limited, opportunities are selective, and returns, at least in theory, can be differentiated from the public market cycle.

Investors are moving back into cash at the fastest pace since the pandemic – a sharp and telling shift in positioning.
Recent data shows average cash holdings have risen to 4.3% of assets under management in March, up from 3.4% in February – the largest monthly increase since March 2020. Just weeks earlier, allocations were sitting near record lows at 3.2%, reflecting a far more optimistic outlook