The purpose of investing is not simply to accumulate wealth. The real "prize" is financial wellbeing. As Yogi Berra famously observed: "If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else." Eyes on the prize! Strategies Summit 2026 (Wed 19 Aug) will challenge and refresh your portfolio construction thinking through robust debate of contemporary and emerging strategies to help you build better quality portfolios.

Over the past three decades, geopolitical fragmentation, technological disruption, fiscal expansion, energy security concerns and changing market structures – and now, the infusion of AI into every aspect of society – have altered the very foundations on which portfolios have been built. In short, the macro environment that shaped portfolio construction no longer exists.

Every era convinces itself it is living through something unprecedented. Noise and cognitive bias can distort our reading of the world – but a fresh lens reveals just how resilient the global economy really is.

Volatility is no longer a temporary disruption. It is increasingly a defining feature of the investment landscape. Geopolitical fragmentation, tighter liquidity, technological change and faster capital cycles are reshaping markets, while volatility is reinforcing secular themes such as AI, electrification, energy infrastructure and national security, creating generational thematic investment opportunities. As short-term market outcomes remain uncertain, the direction of these long-term forces is becoming clearer. Investors should look beyond traditional diversification and keep their eyes on the prize – building exposure to the capital-intensive themes driving economic change, using private markets to access broader opportunity sets, enhance resilience and capture long-term returns.

By understanding the investment behaviours of stock market "maestros", practitioners can identify highly skilled fund managers and improve their own portfolio construction decisions, better equipping them to deliver the ultimate "prize" for clients - financial wellbeing.

Portfolio construction must evolve to reflect a structurally different world. Traditional diversification assumptions and portfolio frameworks which may not fully capture the risks to which portfolios are actually exposed - or take advantage of emerging asset class opportunities that the structurally different world is exposing.
How can practitioners construct multi-asset, multi-manager investment (MAMMI) portfolios which are greater than the sum of their parts and improve the financial wellbeing of individuals?

The shift from low inflation and negative stock-bond correlations is structural and has rendered conventional multi-asset diversification inadequate. Practitioners must look beyond public markets and directional risk. Non-directional digital asset derivatives takes the prize, providing resilience essential for multi-asset portfolios.

Supported by durable long-term growth trends and a history of low correlation to traditional markets, the full SME opportunity is too compelling for investors to ignore.

Powerful structural forces are reshaping the world as we know it. Capturing the opportunities resulting from structural trends, and managing the risks emerging from them can only be achieved through a Total Portfolio Approach.

A static fixed income allocation was built for a world that no longer exists. Absolute return fixed income is the diversification prize. A factor-based framework can help investors when assessing these strategies.

Markets have narrowed sharply around a single theme: AI hardware bottlenecks, amplified by the launch of AI agents and scaled-up capex plans. Concentration and single-theme exuberance typically precede a durable broadening, with value dispersion narrowing and the style outperforming even as industry outcomes widen through disruption. Markets are at a turning point where the valuation extremes are set to unwind, and the next cycle’s winners will look very different from previous decades. Allocators seeking diversification and protection should rebalance toward fundamental value in global equity portfolios.

Many of the traditional sources of diversification – including bonds, private markets and hedge funds – have become increasingly caught up in the same market forces. This makes alternative risk premia crucial in portfolios.

Traditional strategic allocation frameworks may be too static for a macro backdrop that continues to evolve. Connecting macro signals to portfolio construction helps manage changing risks and opportunities and build portfolios with greater confidence and consistency.

Every active portfolio holds two bets: selection, which is measured, and sizing, which is merely asserted. Decades of evidence show naive equal weighting is remarkably hard to beat.

A multi-sector approach offers a credit opportunity set ~10x larger than private credit, daily liquidity instead of quarterly gates, and diversified relative value across every sector – capturing similar yield without concentrating risk in one illiquid slice.

Portfolio construction must evolve to reflect a structurally different world. Traditional diversification assumptions and portfolio frameworks which may not fully capture the risks to which portfolios are actually exposed - or take advantage of emerging asset class opportunities that the structurally different world is exposing.
How can practitioners construct multi-asset, multi-manager investment (MAMMI) portfolios which are greater than the sum of their parts and improve the financial wellbeing of individuals?

While often overlooked by investors, volatility as an asset class is driven by a genuine risk-transfer premium and is therefore intuitive, attractive and – importantly - sustainable despite these macro changes. To make portfolios more resilient while still meeting return targets and delivering investors peace-of-mind (Eyes on the Prize!), volatility is worth exploring.

Fundamental active equity allocations should be shorter term, tactical, alpha seeking allocations and/or focused on alpha generating strategies that help to reduce overall portfolio risk.

Portfolio construction is moving beyond asset-class labels and deliberately selecting the exposures that matter most. Many of the most important portfolio decisions are no longer being made in traditional core allocations, but in the targeted exposures investors choose to build around them.

Decades of evidence show that the average active manager underperforms the market after fees. Systematic active-extension strategies have historically outperformed traditional long-only active managers by significant margins.