The headwinds to globalisation are more structural than cyclical, which means those in favour of open markets have a serious challenge to overcome.

Large institutional investors are set to put cash to work in 2017, a BlackRock survey has found. One in four (25%) institutions surveyed intend to decrease their cash allocations during the year, nearly twice as many as those who plan to increase their cash holdings (13%).

According to Tarek Issaoui, Head of Cross Asset Flexible Solutions at THEAM, coming months and years will most probably see more differentiation between the performance of flexible funds. As diversification benefits become less important, drawdown management will develop into a key element of underperformance or outperformance over the peer group.

This product, launched in 2012, uses a long-only investment strategy applied to a multi-asset universe, including equities, sovereign and corporate bonds (in both emerging and developed markets) and commodities through liquid instruments. Implementation of the strategy increases diversification by building exposures to traditional and alternative risk premia...

We believe now is a good time to ready bond portfolios for reflation: improving growth, wage gains and higher inflation. We see global reflation running further in 2017 and spurring a modest rise in global bond yields.