The first three months of 2020 go down in history as the worst Q1 ever for global stock markets. Many measures of market stress reached levels last seen in the financial crisis and some price moves were on a scale not witnessed since the great Crash of 1929. The surge in market volatility reflects one of the most abrupt adjustments in investor sentiment ever seen...

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU's securities regulator, has published the second Trends, Risks and Vulnerabilities (TRV) report for 2019. The report identifies a deteriorating outlook for the asset management industry and continued very high market risk.

Looking back at 2018, it was a year when European corporate earnings continued to grow, while market volatility was surprisingly high. The volatility was a result of both political noise and the fear of a slowdown in global growth.

According to Christopher Gannatti, Head of Research, WisdomTree, the lesson here for investors is the potential to embrace volatility. Where a rising VIX typically equates to a short-term equity sell-off, EM investors who have used the dips as buying opportunities historically have seen positive results.

Market volatility also played out, as well as the growing share of jumbo deals, usually more sensitive to adverse developments. Amid very supportive conditions for M&A (from the tax reform in particular), weaker deal rationales are also mentioned as a greater source of deal volatility.