2025 delivered another year of record highs – but it didn’t come quietly. Global equities climbed to new highs for a third year running, with emerging markets and the UK standing out as strong performers. However, markets didn’t rise smoothly all year
This report is based on our independent, unbiased fund research and explores key themes across the fund management landscape, including performance outcomes, industry consolidation, winning investment styles, personnel changes, passive investing, the emergence of new products and trends, and regulatory developments.
Elements of ESG investing have existed for a long time. Traditional approaches mostly used and continue to use
Today, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced one of the most closely-watched Autumn Budgets in recent memory. She faces a difficult economic reality: stubborn inflation, rising unemployment, weak productivity, and high debt servicing costs. Against this backdrop, she has had to create a spending and taxation plan that doesn’t politically sink the already-unpopular Labour government.
In recent weeks, you may have seen headlines about a potential market bubble in the so-called “Magnificent 7” technology stocks and the Artificial Intelligence (AI) part of the market.
The US equity market declined late last week, following news that Donald Trump intends to impose additional
tariffs on China. This was in response to China announcing tighter restrictions on the export of rare earth
minerals — a move that effectively slows the global distribution of these critical inputs.
In January 2021, the FCA banned the sale of cryptocurrency Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs) to retail investors. The
regulator has now lifted the restrictions (effective 8th October 2025).
Why do funds so often favour investments close to home? This tendency, which is called a home bias, occurs when an
investor allocates a disproportionate weight to shares and bonds of companies from their home market at the expense
of a more globally diversified portfolio. We touched on the phenomenon in our article on multi-asset investing earlier
this year and thought it would be useful to explore the topic further with you
A surprising reaction. On 27th August this year, US chipmaker NVIDIA1 published its second-quarter financial results. It announced that it had delivered $47bn of revenue
Active fund managers are investors who prefer to do something rather than do nothing. Instead of simply buying the index (as a passive fund does), they build their own portfolios in the hope of outperforming.
