As policymakers begin to craft a new Bretton Woods, and seek to embed the values that liberal democracies want to uphold, practitioners must understand the implications for portfolios.

We may indeed be in for a shortish period of high inflation and low growth - but as to this leading to 1980s-style stagflation? It's nuts and you can clearly see it's nuts!

The next 10 years are likely to be dramatically different than the last 10 years, and investors will need allocations to alternative investments in this challenging environment.

We must take a multi-factor approach to analysing funds – including ESG, Quality, Size, amongst others – to ensure portfolios reflect the investor's longer-term philosophy and/or shorter term views.

Prolonged exposure to high volatility causes investors to subsequently underestimate volatility (and vice versa), leading to predictability in stock returns - and the ability to construct a trading strategy that exploits the effect.

Simply put, the effort to fight inflation could easily crash the economy, the markets, or both. The historical evidence shows that a soft landing is highly improbable. A recession in the next two years is likely.

Since I addressed Markets Summit 2022 back on 23 February, arguing it was time for a new investing playbook, there has been a major repricing in financial assets. The adjustment has further to run.

Since I addressed Markets Summit 2022 back on 23 February, arguing "The days of abnormal monetary policy are over", Russia's invasion of Ukraine has triggered a food and energy crisis while declining consumer sentiment and Chinese lockdowns provide headwinds to growth.

The arguments for and against active and passive management are much more nuanced than is often suggested by proponents on either side. In this Spotlight, we review the hard facts as represented by the S&P Index Versus Active (SPIVA) data, which farrelly’s views as the definitive database on active management.

With stock market valuations close to record highs, and interest rates beginning to rise from all-time lows, traditional portfolios are likely to disappoint in the years ahead.

As of 6 May, the bond market expected US consumer price inflation to average 2.5% between five and 10 years from now. So why does Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University argue "things are way out of control"?

Hindsight can be a valuable source of learning. However, hindsight is undermined by a range of factors and hindsight bias clouds judgments in all areas of life - including investing.

Is there such a thing as normal? Steady states are becoming increasingly rare, the belief in 'reversion to the mean' is less relevant than ever and, ultimately, investors are better placed focusing long-term change.

Over the long-term, dividend growth and dividend yield are the dominant sources of long-term return. Valuation's importance recedes over time. Sustainable dividend growth companies appear to play defence well.

A great attack scores points, but defence wins premierships. The same principal applies to investment portfolios. By making private debt the centre of a defensive strategy, investors can win in all conditions.

The risks of a global recession trifecta are rising by the day. I am not sure politicians and policymakers are up to the task they may soon confront.

Gold has fascinated investors and analysts for decades. But it is a poor hedge against inflation over meaningful time horizons, and it is close to its highest real price in 800 years.

For many decades, the default investment portfolio was a 60/40 split – this was seen as the ideal blend of growth and defensive investments for most investors most of the time. Will it continue to deliver in a high inflation, high interest rate environment?

Although traditional barriers to participation in PE are fading, PE remains on the bench for many individual investors. With an end to easy value creation and challenging conditions ahead, don't miss out on PE outperformance in 2022.

The next decade of decarbonisation is the decade of opportunity to de-risk portfolios and identify green investments. Climate change risk factors are changing asset valuations. Key to success is the need for portfolios to account for climate change risk or risk being obsolete.

The predictable downward revision cycle for the global economic outlook has officially begun. The revision by the IMF, largely in response to the war in Ukraine, is a big one...

Record low interest rates have fundamentally changed the playbook for income investors. With banks withdrawing from the CRE debt market, other lenders have greater opportunity.

Inflection points in inflation, interest rates and the large-scale monetary distortion of recent decades suggest the future will not repeat the same playbook as recent decades.

Rising interest rates will create casualties and collateral damage in asset prices, but will bring back market discipline, requiring a rethink of what "defensive" even means.

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